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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Scottrospective: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together! or Days of Summer

Hello all you happy scottaholics! Welcome back to those of you who’ve read the rest of this retrospective and welcome to those of you just joining us. This is the Scottrospective, my look at all 6 volumes of Scott Pilgrim, the game and the movie. It’s all the video game refrenes, slice of life story telling and boob punches you can handle!

It’s been three months since I left off with “The Infinite Sadness” , and while I intended to cover this one for Valentine’s Day, my schedule got away from me and with March being full up, this ended taking till April

I”m not too put off by it though as the hiatus between these two reviews is fitting for this one both in story and out. In story there’s a couple month time skip between books, while out.. this book got delayed a few times.

This is notable to me at least because this was the first volume of the series I bought when it came out. As i’ve brought up before I came into the series via the Free Comic Book Day Issue and the second and third volumes, picking one up later. I still have my original copies despite no longer really needing them thanks to having the color editions in general. Always will provided something dosne’t happen to them. So this was my first instalment that I got to read fresh and got to wait for and be hyped about and i’d saved enough money that I was able to pre-order it. So the experince of waiting and waiting for the book only to keep seeing it slide back is vivid in my mind as is the frustration I felt having the one thing I COULD NOT WAIT FOR, keep going further and further back.

So with this long wait and the fact I bought this one when it came out, as I would for the next two which didn’t get delayed thank god, this volume naturally means a lot for me. When I wrote Scott Pilgrim fanfiction, this volume’s status quo is what I based it on. It was the coolest to me and the one I loved to reread the most. It has the most contained story, the most character growth at the time, and the best art due to Bryan’s style having finally hit it’s stride. Not that the art for volumes 1-3 is bad mind you, but it’s very clear his style was changing and shaping into what it is now with each one and while it’d change a bit more, this volume is where the style and quality everyone thinks of when they think of this series and the kind you see on various art done from it comes from.

So as you can tell i’m excited for this one. Before we get started there WERE two shorter comics released between this one both for Free Comic Book day, the first of which, Free Scott Pilgrim, is the reason I got into the series and the second, the Wonderful World of Kim Pine .. was both delightful and sets up Kim moving in with Hollie for this volume. Originally I intended to cover these in this review.. but I realized they wouldn’t of helped the pacing and this review is going to be way longer than my standard as is.

So instead I came up with the compromise. I did review them.. but as bonus reviews on my patreon. For just one buck a month you can read them and help me reach my stretch goals which now include reviews of Lost at Sea, Seconds and SnotGirl, aka Bryan’s OTHER comics. You can find my patreon THROUGH THIS LINK HERE if your intrested in the exclusives or helping me reach my reviews. I also intend to do an exclusive of Monica Beetle, a short comic Bryan did starring Scott’s dad in the 70s at some point so keep your eyes peeled for that, as well as the three strips he did of Style, the comic that gave us the prototypes for Lisa and Kim.

I will talk about their connections and setups for this volume briefly: FSP sets up the next ex as a ninja, with Roxy having a bunch of posters come to live and pummel our boy, while Wonderful World has Hollie tell Kim she can move in with her. It’s not much, hence why i made these exclusives but they are good stories, so check them out. And with that JOIN ME UNDER THE CUT, as we enter Scott’s world once more as he grapples with the past, employment, and saying the L-Word... which might be Lesbians. I don’t know. Find out bellow!

So we open Two Months after Volume 3 with a beach birthday party! Complete with Kim in a swim suit!

But it’s for Julie who lobs a volley ball at Scott’s head when he and Ramona try to make out.

I also dont’ know if “Manfiesting out of all the world’s collectives sorrows” counts as a “birth” necessarily but whatever. I love a good beach story. It’s just a fun setitng for swimming, romance and battling a giant crab with the help of the bird what lives in your backpack.

So after the beach our heroes get dinner and Ramona sweetly calls Scott the nicest guy she’s ever dated. He responds with “That’s sad”. Blunt, but entirely accruate. Julie calls it pathetic and tries to counter Ramona RIGHTFULLY saying “who the hell asked you?” something that really should come after EVERYTHING Julie said with “Back off bitch i’ts my birthday”

So later that night Sex Bomb-Omb has a beach sing along, and I can’t help but notice Neil’s hairy legs.

I mean yes it does make since for a 19 year old to have leg hair, but of all the characters besides Stephen, the ONLY other character we’ve seen it with to give it to, why the character you specifically single out as “Young” it’s just a weird choice I never noticed before.

But anyways Julie has to whine about it because she’s Julie, she can’t stand other people being happy and complains the song...

One of my faviorite moments of the series. Knives puts a nicer spin on it, she’s here too and not over with Neil because, as we’ll find out later they broke up, but she just asks if Knives should be drinking. She shouldn’t but for fucks sake lady she was just trying to talk. I also do like that despite Julie trying to control Ramona’s love life, you know the thing the VILLIANS are doing, Ramona cannot stand her now.. and honestly probably never did.

But Julie, SOMEHOW turns out to be right for once as Kim and Knives have disappeared later that night, and Scott elects to go look for them. Also Ramona says she wants to marry kim while drunk after Julie asks if she does. The throuple is strong with these three... serioulsy that’s my one true pairing for all three now. I mean it ballances out their collective flaws, it’s cute and Ramona is just as into her boyfriends ex as she is her actual boyfriend even when she’s not hamered. Why the fuck not?

Scott instead finds the two making out. I will confess I shipped these two when I was younger.. but I don’t. Not because their gay or anything or because I found another ship for them but because the age gap is still just as wide as it was for Scott. The game did not get this memo and made them a couple which is... ehhhhhhhhh. I mean I wouldn’t mind either being bi, but it just brings up the same problems even if their both hammered. I also question why this scene exists. No really outside of one face punchingly dickish comment from Scott later, this never comes up again and it doesn’t effect Kim’s or Knives character any. Why have this? it’s clearly not fanservice, it’s just a thing that happened. And while Scott Pilgrim as a series does have some of those, as does life and that’s fine.. this is a bit too major, i.e. Kim and Knives, two of the main cast, making out, drunkenly or not, to just.. gloss over you know? I feel Kim would feel majorly guilty for this, as she has the most active moral compass of the main group, and Knives would be massively confused but it’s just.. forgotten because I dunno. In a story that’s otherwise pretty stellar this stands out as an utter waste of potential. I’m not saying have them hook up, gay or not it’s still not better than what Scott did, but have them at least talk about it and have both grow or something from it. Sheesh.

So we cut to.. another day. Maybe the next day I dunno but it’s August. Point is Scott and Wallace are grocery shopping and Wallace notes they can’t get fancy mayo as their barely in budget. I would’ve glossed over this scene... but @panur pointed out back around the Infinite Sadness review that this scene reveals something very intrestng: Scott.. is kind of a fincial burdern to Wallace. Before this while Scott mooched off him it wasn’t all that clear that Wallace was struggling.

But here we notice that outside of some Havarti, it’s just the simplest stuff imaginable: turkey, bread, boxed mac and cheese ramen noodles... it’s nto BAD stuff, I have all of that in my house and it’s good stuff... but it’s not the kind of thing that you need to carefully budget for. Now granted part of this probably is Wallace as he likely spends a LOT on drinks, condoms and two 2 liters of diet soda a day.. but while he really needs to adress his alcohol issues, the rest is fair. He should be allowed to have as much sex and diet coke as he wants it’s his money. Same with the havarti. He earned it if he wants some really delcious cheese with herbs, seriously Havarati is the best, then that’s his bidness. But the rest of the time he’s barely managing to get a basketfull of cheap food.. because he has to provide for Scott. It’s clearly something Scott dosen’t get and something I can relate to not getting. It took me a while to get how hard it is to budget for a full family, let alone two people on one income like Wallace has to. But Wallace is working on a nice job... but still a call center or something. He can’t pay for everything and the finccial stress is about to give as their landlord wants to meet with them. And as we’re about to learn things were even worse than we thought.

Our heroes head home where we get a truly iconic conversation when, over margeritas (again proving my point that while Scott certainly isn’t HELPIGN wallace’s finacials, it’s not all on him)

This will be imporant later.. both the Lesbians part and Scott’s struggle saying it. he tried earlier on the beach but couldn’t get it out and Ramona clearly didn’t want to hear it as she kapt sshhhhing him.. playfully of course but still.

So some time later it’s moving day! Kim is moving into Hollie and Josephs, and Scott, Stephen and Jason are helping. You might be wondeirng who the hell Jason is. He’s Kim’s boyfriend. I do not likes him. Not because he’s kim’s boyfriend, getting upset because a fictional character you fancy is dating is just patently stupid. I’ts like getting upset a celebrity crush is in a relationship: you had no chance anyway why. I wasn’t even bothered as a kid. I don’t really like him.. because he has no real personaliy and no real baring on the plot and I struggle to think why Bryan included him other than for a really annoying plot twist next time, which does not help my liking him knowing what’s coming.

But while our heroes help our heroine move in, and Scott is suprised Hollie is there despite Kim having told him a minute ago she was moving in with her, something I can relate to sadly, we get something vitally plot important; Stephen passes Joseph’s room.. and notices he has a small recording setup in his room. Stephen quickly begs him to record the band’s album and Joseph agrees if only because he finds Stephen hot. Eh i’ve seen better relationships start on less, fair enough. And yes I said relationship more on that in a bit.

So after a brief scene of Scott and Ramona having lunch where Scott fails to know her age and when Ramona says he could just ask.. hea sks and she dosen’t tell, not a bad scene character wise just not very plot important and probably should’ve bene swapped in order with the previous scene, we get to the next day. There’s a heat wave so Wallace orders Scott to go to the mall maybe find a job. He emphasises that.

Instead Scott just sorta bums around thirst but nto having any money.. until an old face shows up.

For those who forgot like Scott has, it’s Lisa Miller from the Volume 2 flashback, the girl who had a crush on Scott and was close friends with him and Kim. After a tackle hug and some panic Scott eventually remembers.... if in a curiously unique and self serving way

At the time this was just hilarous. Now it’s very clear foreshadowing for the big twist in Volume 6. The two catch up while Scott is very clearly attracted to her but very clearly dosen’t want to be, with Lisa wondering where kim is, finding about Ramona, etc, before offering Scott lunch as the two catch up and Scott is very conflicted about how he feels. It’s nice visual stuff as he’s blushing, something more clear in the color version and trying to desperatley sort things out. As for why Lisa’s here she’s moving to the states soon, but is staying with her sister for now.

So after an incdental scene with Wallace we catch up with Knives, who has broken up with Neil. And after some talk about Clash at the Demonhead, Tamra notes Knives apparently put a big x on her shrine of Scott... which baffles Knifves as she sure as hell didn’t do it and is still, sadly, obessed with Scott as ever. Granted Tamra isn’t at all helpful here claiming she did it even when she says she didn’t, is clearly confused and while yes we don’t know who else would care Tams, that just makes it all the more creepy. Stop gaslighting your bestie, she’s already got enoguh issues. She dosen’t need thinking she might have a split personality on top of the stalking, obession over a guy who has no intrest in loving her back, and attempted stabbings. Knives dosesn’t get a ton of focus in this one sadly. She kind of takes a back seat, and while sh’es not GONE from the volumle and someone close to her does impact it, she dosen’t really have any personal progression, negative or positive, like she does in every other volume, a shame since her personal jouney is one of the most intresting of the main cast.

Anyways that night Scott hangs out with Lisa, having not gotten around to telling Ramona she exists yet and plays a game of find the Kim Pine. She goes to Neil’ and Stephen’s place for practice, but finds no one there and Neil being a dick... get used to that it’s going to get about 80 times worse soon enough. Though we do get this classic panel i’ve gotten some use out of

He goes to Kim’s place, but she , Hollie and Satan’s Misterss have all left to Sneaky Dee’s, the local mexican place, for something to eat and Stephen is either high or doing.. something with Joseph.

Yeah i’m not hiding that Stephen turns out to be gay in the final volume or cheating on Bitch and a Half with Joseph. And even if I hate Julie with the power of a frozen sun, I still dont’ think cheating on her is kosher. He could’ve just broken up with her and while part of it was likely confusion, and he could also be bi and not decided which one he wanted to be with, it’s still a dick move.. and later makes him a hypocrite but that’s a rant for next volume.

So our heroes FINALLY find Kim, along with Hollie and Mouthface. And a nice thing I like is that Kim and Lisa are just.. increidbly close, happily catching up and making plans to hang before Lisa leaves, that despite Lisa having feelings for Scott the two ended up as close and She and Scott did and i’ts sweet to see. it’s also just.. rare to see Kim GENUINELY happy. I mean look at her

It’s not like she HASN’T smiled across the series but normally she’s just so miserable, likely because her best friends are a grumbly asshole who forces them to hang out with a raging typhoon of bitchiness, and an insenitive asshat who she never got closure with. This is the first decent human being whose not Ramona or Hollie, and that last one’s not going to last, in a while. It’s genuinely sweet to just see her.. enjoy the moment for once, honestly engaged with someone. Ramona shows up and finally meets Lisa, who apparently was on Degrassi.. I mean she says candaian show no one ever watched, and I watched that plenty but i’d like to think she was on there for a season or two. I liked Degrassi.. I honeslty miss it and think it could use some form of revivial and think porting it to netflix was a smart decision.. what wasn’t so smart was not having the other seasons leading into it on there. Need to watch more of it.

So the next day Ramona stumbles into Scott’s dreams and both are annoyed, with Ramona suggesting he get a job. This finally gets him to try. He asks about Wallace’s work but understandably, he dosen’t really want scott there and asks if he even knows. So Scott sets out to ask his other friends for jobs, while Knives shows up saying she’s “totally not stalking him” but someone is following HER, a mysterious spiky haired dude in a black leather jacket, shades and with a sword on his back. Whu-oh.

He tries Second Cup, with Julie annoyed that Stephen’s recording.. it’s hard to tell if she’s annoyed because she’s a bitch or because Stephen is both gneuinely annoying right now and clearly screwing around behind her back. My take?

But Scott realizes maybe getting a job at his Sister’s place of work who also works with his arch enemy might be stupid and backs out. He next tries Kim’s, but backs out of that too, admitting to kim it’d be stupid and Kim lists off all the reasons (His lack of resume, the fact them working together would be stresful and his ountain of late fees) why that’d be stupid, but in a jovial way. For once i’ts clear that while she’s still taking the piss out of them she isn’t mad at Scott.

In fact she genuinely helps him get a job, taking him to Stephen’s work since hers is dead right now anyway, a vegan place. While Scott naturally compares things to a job system as he’d start as dishwasher while Stephen taught him prep, Scott agrees to genuinely take this seriously and Stephen’s boss decides “eh why not” when he asks her to employ him. Scott is gainfully employed baby! God I miss that. Seriously i’m not pimping my patreon for shits and giggles.

But as he celebrates and Kim wishes she could punch his life in the face, they run into some trouble on the way home: Katana man who slices a motherfucking bus in half and chases them, with Scott reluctnat to fight because he has a sword and Scott does not, which is valid. He does escape though using subspace. He and Kim part awkardly and he returns home to Wallace throwing a party with two intresting charcters, a woman and a man of color, one of the few in the entire work, who are never seen again.

The next night is practice.. or rather recording, and we start to see Neil get edged out, with him unable to come due to exams and clearly not happy about it, and Stephen just kind of ignoring anything he cares about like the dickhead he is. It dosen’t get any better as “recording” ends up just being Scott, Ramona, and Ratfaced Knacker watching bored with Joseph and Stephen work. Eventaully Scott and Ramona decide to get out of there as things are getting tensed between thing one and thing bitch, and leave.. and take Julie with them for some reason.

So the three have dinner with Lisa, Kim, and Jason before The Mummies Curse thankfully leaves. Jason thought they were friends.

We also get this exchange.

I mean.. she is the better option. She his THE option. But before we can get the obvious answer of

Stephen comes in with Knives. He smuggled her in. This leads to problems when Scott returns from the bathroom to find Queen Bitch throwing a bitch fit about him having brought her and screechs at her when she dares to talk to him “How do you even know my name?” Well Ted Cruz, you see when someone is an actually thoughtful and likes other people, they keep track of things about them and don’t constnatly tear them down or assume their partneer is automatically bonking a 17 year old instead of you know, actually forming something of a friendship and not shutting her out sensing she needs this friend group. Some people are not vacous piles of vitriol who care about nothing but themself and seem to go off at the slightest thing.

Scott takes Ramona home but finds a drunken barely awake wallace so no sexy times. Not that he could anyway as the next day is the meeting with Peter their landlord.

Peter reveals they’ll have to clear out by the 27th as their lease was for one year and their paid up.. as in only the first and last month. The two part melacholy knowing this sucks and isn’t a great situation. Then it’s time for Scott to work work, angelica, work work, eliza and peggy. After grueling day, can relate, he runs into a wisp on teh wend and steels himself for a fight.. okay he bitches about it being too hot but it’s Scott. so it’s expected. He does get a hit in on his mysterious persuer.. and that’s when we meet Roxy.

Via boob punch, something Scott’s not proud of but in his defense, as Roxy keeps complaning about it, he was blindly struggling for a hit and din’t know the next Ex, or any of them, were female.. not that Ramona didn’t suggest it loudly enough by empahsising “exes” but scott’s a bit of a fuckwit. She mentions “everyone allways remmebers you”.. which is kind of ominus and tells me she tried to hook back up with ramona despite her having a boyfriend and she rejected her. Still on good terms though. But this confusing encounter ends with Roxy vowing she’ll get him next time gadget, next time.

So we get some assorted slice of life scenes with the band, lisa and what have you as Scott tries to get in touch with Ramona but she keeps avoiding him. THat’s not worrysome at all. And Lisa brings up high school while drunk and clearly hits on Scott. He sidesteps it with her drunkness.. but this clearly isn’t over or going to stop being a problem.

Speaking of problems Wallace makes Scott confront the truth: He either needs to find a new place to live or commit to staying, though Wallace is trying to nudge him toward asking Ramona to move into her place. Scott starts thinking it over, it being very hard especially since, as Stephen points out this was his very first place of his own.. but Stephen also points out these things are temoporary.. right before Scott ducks from katana guy.

At work Scott wonders who it could be, though it turns out Stephen’s met him before, as he’s brought his family in here. So he’s PROBABLY not one of the exes.. but it leaves the question why he wants to cut Scott in half like Dewey Cox’s brother. But it turns out he’s nto the only enemy Scott’s casually running into as Roxy is there too.. with Ramona.

The two talk, clearly about Scott and Lisa with Roxy trying to convince her he’s cheating and Ramona rightfully trusting Scott: while he IS attracted to her, he’s been fighting it every step of the way. Scott storms over to find out what’s going on and while Ramona is more distracted by his new job, she eventually realizes Roxy did attack him and he simply dscribed her poorly when he mentioned the incident over the phone. Scott is confused as he dosen’t get it. Is she with one of the exes what? After some hiinting from both parties, and Roxy rightfully mocking him for not getting the obvious... he finallyg ets it in the grandest way possible.

So Roxy gets ready to fight and Scott can’t because sword, and gets fired in the background as he hides in Ramona’s bag and Ramona prepares to step in. Roxy screams at her for trusting him and defending him when Ramona.. just dosen’t her boyfriend to be bisected by her ex. A fight insues and a damn cool one at that. I honestly wish the movie had taken more from this, but simply didn’t have time leading it to instead be more like the envy fight with a bit of the Winfried Hailey fight from Free Scott Pilgrim.

Roxy chases her and Ramona rightly points out Scott can’t run forever but takes him into Subspace.. where Roxy heads them off, having “taught you everything you know bitch” leading to a cool fight in the wintery version of subspace. Again why THIS wasn’t used instead I have no real idea. We also find out she’s a half ninja but she eventually leaves afer Ramona presses that button.. but Rammy is actually apologetic about it and Roxy’s “I hope you and your 24 children are happy together comment” is telling.

Upon this readthrough of the volume.. I realized Roxy is the most layered and intresting of the exes next to Gideon himself. None of them are out and out terrible, but most of them have pretty simple motives: to kill Scott, ???, profit. Or in Todd’s case to kill scott, bang around and be a dick. But Roxy.. genuinely wants Ramona back. She’s the ONLY one who does: Gideon kinda does, but only in the sense that he wants her for his collection. But Roxy geninely still loves her, admitting so during this fight. And it’s not like she has no chance: out of the 7 exes she’s the ONLY one who parted with Ramona on anything resembling good terms. While intrestingly we don’t find out WHY they broke up, Ramona didn’t cheat on her like she did everyone else she was with. The two have coffee and hang out and Ramona geninely dosen’t even consider until Roxy tries to attack Scott that she’d really try killing him and tries her best to talk her out of it. But what holds Roxy back is her anger: She’s so bitter about the fact Ramona is bi or pan, so dedicated to viewing Ramona’s very orintation as a betryal (though Ramona calling it a phase dosen’t help and the movie RIGHTLY has Roxie comment on it and fly into a rage over it), and so driven to make sure the woman she loves dosen’t get hurt again that it blinds her to the fact Ramona dosen’t love her the same way anymore, and that while Scott is objectively a dick, and a cheater, and a greasy buttcrack pooflap, he is not a terrible person. A meh one sure, but he’s got good to him. She’s so biophobic she simply can’t see he’s a harmless moron.. well harmless to Ramona even with the cheating. He’s killed two people at this point and will kill again. Also she apparently has issues with only being a half ninja but this is never adressed. Point is Roxy’s really grown on me and is now probably my faviorite ex.

Scott and Ramona talk it over on their way to Sneaky Dees and Scott finally asks to move in and gets a yes. His response is downright adorable.

So at Sneaky Dee’s Young Neil is just a bit absolutely irate with Scott.. which isn’t fair as them not playing things is entirely on the blocky face asshole. Yell at him.. which he does, pointing out that they haven’t played shows in forever, and that the lady who owns Sneaky Dees not only runs shows, in the upstairs space, but has been asking them to play. Kim is rightly curious about this and to both Stephen just keeps saying “We’re recording right now.” And some of you may of wondered why I hate him. Well while he’s not exctly stellar in the first half in the second Stephen becomes goddman insufferable, slowly destroying the band for his affair and not giving one iota of a shit what anyone else wants. He’s a selfish, egomanical cheating prick. And yes I get it their recording an album.. but doing live shows would give them extra practice, MONEY, even if likely not a lot and exposure for said album. I get professoinal bands stop touring for a bit to do an album but you are not a professional band, and said bands still often iron out the album on the road. God you suck.

But while Scott sidesteps this argument he walks into another where Ramona confronts him about lisa about liking her.. and he rightly says if there was anything, which there was not it’s in the past. And while yes he is a cheater, she does not know this yet. This plot honestly would’ve worked better if she learned about the knives thing sooner, but instead she just comes off as paranoid for listening to Roxy about something that isn’t happening. Yes Scott’s been shown to be attracted to her.. but he’s been ashamed of it, fighting it and in denial about it, and is clealry all in with Ramona. Being attracted to someone else on a phsyical level does NOT mean your relationship is doomed.

Things get worse as he goes home to ruminate.. and instead sees a man’s Penis. And Wallace..is at his second most unsymapthetic, not letting Scott get a shirt or a bus pass or something like a decent human being for no goddamn reason. Usually when Wallace is a dick to Scott, Scott’s earned it and badly needs a slap in the face. Here he’s just being a prick because.. the plot needs him to? I dunno it dosen’t work for me. It’s in character, I just don’t have to like it.

So with no other options.. Scott ends up at Lisa’s. And so we get the last temptation of Scott. Lisa admits, embarassed that she’s been wearing sexy dresses and what not specifically to attract him, with Scott also mentioning how things are rough, Lisa tries to fight it herself pointing out he’s with ramona.. and when Scott points out they didn’t do anything in the past Lisa points out they should’ve.. and maybe they should now.

We fade to black as Scott ends up in a dream and finds Roxy, who naturally has the same skill and tries to Freddy Kruger him before he wakes. He finds Lisa but they didn’t do anything: Scott pushed her away and babbled about how much he loved Ramona instead. As i’ve said.... his heart was never with LIsa... and even when he was so close to giving in he couldn’t. It’s a tangible sign of growth: He screwed around on Knives with Ramona, and given how bad things were getting with Ramona, it would be oh so easy to once again ditch a relationship the minute he found something else and oh so understandable. But... he dosen’t. He loves Ramona even if he hasn’t said it, he wants to make this work, and he’s changed. She’s changed him. He’s not quite a good man yet.. bu he’s getting to be good enough. Love turned him from a skeezy dumbass into a far more loveable dumbass. Ramona’s gotten him to stop dating a teenager (even if again he cheated), face his past with envy to finally move on and now get a job. He’s realized just hwo much she means to his life and world and so he goes to tell her.

Riggghtttt after going to get his job back and works a shift, with steven wanting to punch his life in the balls. Stephen shut the fuck up. Just because Scott is lucky and your stuck dating satan’s scrotum does not mean you get to punch his life int he balls. Kim does, because he’s put her through more shit but not you.

He goes to second cup to talk to Stacey.. only to end up at the wrong one where Knives also now has a job... and we finally get an answer to who the mystery katana guy is...

Yup turns out wielding giant weapons in vengance runs in the family. As for how he knows about Scott her aunt mentioned her boyfriend, everyone freaked out and obviously while her mom was mentioned as knowing in volume 1, they did not tell her dad whose brain turned into an engine of vengance and defaced the shrine. While part of it is apparnetly racisim for Scott being white the fact is he clearly saw Scott’s photograph. The guy is 5 years older. I get him being protective. Still dosen’t justify cutting off his head. His balls maybe but not his head.

And then Scott ran, once agian finding a subspace entracne.. and this time we see inside ramona’s head and well...

Yeah.. that’s.. kind of fucked, and Ramona isn’t happy scott saw that, though she backs down once Scott explains..a nd then gets upset over him staying at Lisa’s but before SCott can tell her he loves her it turns out Roxy stayed over. So yeah, Ramona might of cheated, she tells him to alk it off and he runs around in a psycadelic haze of emtoinal confusion. And meets.. someone new...

Scott snaps out of his funk and ignores his doppleganger heading back for Ramona... whose fighting Mr. Chau. Scott left the door to Ramona’s head open and he followed him through Subspace. Scott lures him into the house and away from her only to run into Roxy. This leads to both of his attackers fighting and her wondering if Gideons ent him “Why does no one ever belivie in me?!”

She soon realize no i’ts just unrelated and calls Scotto ut on hiding behind not having a sword and behind her being a woman, caling it a flimsy excuse. I mean she’s tring to kil lhim. It’s okay to hit an enemy combatant. Scott realizes he has to stop running... and get real with ramona leading to a truly epic, romantic and heartfelt speech and given how far he’s come and just how heartfelt it is it’s a real sign of how deep he feels. Sure we’ve seen genuine chemstiry between the two.. but htis moment is a shit.. from a simple relationship.. into true love.

I may of only had a few but Relationships are not easy, They take work, they take time, they take patience and theyt ake love.. but if your willing to work with someone, look past some flaws and help them with the rest.. then it’s worth it. And Scott has finally realized it and for the first time in a while is running TOWARDS something difficult, actually working on this relationship and talking with his partner instead of running finding someone else or wallowing. He’s truly grown up. While he still has miles to go.. he’s taken about 50 steps forward with this. And as such given the kind of unvierse we’re in, as Ramona is genuinely touched by it he levels up a glowing sword with a heart shaped hilt coming out of his chest.. and realizing what’s happening he pulls it out....

So Scott faces off with roxy and in an awesomly short battle, their sords clash.. and he bisects her.

Scott then honestly talks down Mr Chau who leaves after a nod, and Ramona tells Scott she loves him two. The two make out and all is well.

One make out fades into another, as we cut to Scott moving in with Kim and Blockhead’s help. Well kinda they only had one box but they owed him one. He and wallace comiserate over the end of their time as roomies. They’ll always be friend but it’s truly the end of an era. Also Wallace gets off another bit of dickery as he’’s very glad it all worked out for scott...

Now there’s the Wallace I know and love. Dickish but just the right loveable kind of douchebag with that swagger.

Back at Knives house she’s apparenlty into somebody though who I have no idea, Mr Chau give sher his blessing and she.. apparenlty doesen’t know chinese. I dunno. As I said her subplot this go round was her weakest overall.

And so we end with the whole gang gathered to see Lisa off. It’s a REALLY nice shot, and one of the only times Wallace is seen with the Sex Bomb omb side of the group. Oh sure he goes to their shows and what not, but generally their never in the same vincinity so while there’s no interaction I still find this neat. Seriously the whole main cast is there, it’s a really lovely shot

Also Jason and Hollie.. who are getting awfully chummy. Whu Oh. And of course Craphole and Mouth Face are as likeable as ever.

So we jsut get a genuinely nice sene. Except Stephen and Julie reconciling. Fuck that. Please move on. And as everyone fondly wishes Lisa adeu and wish she stuck arond the res tof the series we end on Scott and Ramona snuggling, Scott asking her her birthday and finding out she’s 24, and they both will be come september. Scott wishes this moment could last.

They probperly snuggle as the volume ends on a high.

Final Thoughts:

Yeah.. Gets it Together is, on rexamination, DEFINTELY my faviorite of the 6. Besides personal value i’ts hte best contained story, contaning lots of character development, great character moments, jokes, and EASILY the best art so far, with goregouness and creativty abounding.

There is a problem here or there: Stephen and Julie’s subplot feels underbaked, and not just because I hates them, and there are several scenes that don’t further plot or character stuff. Ther’es also stuff that could’ve been expanded on.. but given this is still a pretty meaty graphic novel, it’s understandable why it wasn’t.. though it is why I’d love a streaming series since while the movie is excellent, a full series could expand on stuff from the books more Brian simply didn’t have time for. Knives also didn’t get a lot to do.

But their drowned out by tons of great decisions: Lisa was a wonderful additoin to the cast and I genuinely wish she’d stuck around, adding in some energy, blending well with the Sex Bomb Omb crowd, and having great dynamics with everyone and her arc with Scott is heartbreaking,knowing she can’t have him but wanting him anyway having never gottne proper closure on the man she’s always wanted. She’s a heartbreaking character and its nice to see her end in a decent place and on good terms with Scott, having let him go for both thier sakes.

And while Lisa is a highlight everyone is on their a game here for the most part apart from knives, girl hitler, and captain dumbass: Scott grows signfigantly but is funny as hell, Wallace has an intresting arc trying to nudge Scott out without being overt about it, scared to really confront him, Kim is in a happy and serene place for once and it shows. The villians are also intresting: While Mr Chau is a tad underbaked, he’s sitll a cool imposing presence. I do think he shoudl’ve had more to do with the plot.. but is still just so freaking cool it papers over that and him just.. disappearing after this like poor Lisa.

Roxy is far more intresting, having clearly more going on than we see and while I wish we’d got her backstory, she’s easily the most engaging of the exes, being the only one to actively compete with Scott (All her and ramona end up doing is making out a little it turned out), and have bigger stakes than just “The glasses wearing douche asked me to beat up my exes boyfriend and I was like alright.

All in all Gets it Together is really magical, the series high point, and just damn fun and it was a pleasure to go through

Next Month on Scott Pilgrim: It all falls down as we take a look into what once was my least faviorite Album, vs the unvierse. Two perfect assholes try and murder scott with Robutts, his relationship and band crumble and things get sad so very very sad.

Next on this blog: More LIlo and Stitch! The Proud Family come to Kauai and get into a fight with our heroes. Also wizard kelly... who if nothing else is now far more tolerable now i’ve had to spend another volume with the wicked bitch of the west. Touche universe touche. See you at the next rainbow.

#scott pilgrim #ramona flowers #wallace wells #roxanne richter #knives chau #stephen stills #julie power #mr chau #stacey pilgrim #neil nordgraf #young neil #comics #oni press #scotrospective #lisa miller #kim pine #jospeh

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miraculouscontent · 3 years

Text

(miraculous asks)

Anonymous said:

Oh My Gosh!!!! I was just thinking about Party Crasher and man I hate how they had Ladybug get captured for the men to save! It's a continuous thing you see in media: strong heroic woman gets put in peril so that the men can shine. I didn't even realize it until you said it! I get that it was probably meant to be a "role reversal" of Chat always getting kidnapped or brainwashed for Ladybug to save, but the fact that this is the "guys' episode" it read like "well damn, we can't have the guys be strong if a girl is in the way; let's have the girl get captured so the boys can prove their worth by rescuing her!".

At least in Sandboy, Ladybug was still competent and came up with the plans, but this?! It makes me sick, and it's all too easy to fall into these traps; even Kim Possible did it! In my magical girl story, the heroine does get put in a magical coma and require someone to bail her out, but it's her female friends AND her boyfriend who save her, so it's not just a girl being weakened so a boy can be powerful, especially since said boy actually does a minority of the work required to save her; the focus is on the female characters so it's her girl friends who do most of it. I still ended up scrapping that side plot anyway, and do you know why? Because regardless of who saved her, I still didn't want my female protagonist to be put in distress at all due to the unfortunate implications! Needing help in a fight? Sure. But outright being captured or kidnapped? Nah fam.

I was honestly thinking about that when the first episode came out. Like, they could’ve just had Marinette NOT SHOW UP in time so the guys take care of things, which at least gives more of a message that Paris wouldn’t go to hell just because Ladybug is a little late or something.

And yeah, the “boys squad episode so gotta toss the girl out” is... sigh.

Anonymous said:

I think the writers were trying to show Chat angsting to show his regret instead of an actual apology. Still doesn't explain why Aeon didn't bring up her death afterwards. Did Olympia delete that from her memory banks?

I guess? :|

I don’t know why Chat can’t just apologize without fishing or trying to earn sympathy. Like JUST SAY YOU’RE SORRY, DAMMIT.

Anonymous said:

If you haven't read Maribat, then you won't regret it. I am not in the DC universe but I started reading it and WOW. Literally every single time Marinette is a badass queen and gets her complete revenge and is actually happy! Even if you absolutely love Lukanette (which I have nothing against) you should totally try it.

Appreciate the comment, but I find it hard to ship other Marinette ships outside of Lukanette. Ivanette is a very loose exception and it’s not like I ship it hard or anything.

Anonymous said:

Despite not being a Lukanette shipper I love you. Why? Because you amazing, so right in literally everything and I love you <33

gkdfjgfdngjkfdg thank you

bat-anon said:

The NY Special made it so that Max is literally the only Black/Brown kid that doesn’t exist to make Love Square happen and that just makes me hate it even more.

I wish you didn’t make me have this realization because I hate it.

At least Delmar existed in the New York special???? I guess???? I dunno, I’m trying here, I don’t recall him doing anything love square centric.

Anonymous said:

I honestly don't mind Alix's outfit as Bunnix! I feel like it fits her, plus she's an adult so its not much of a problem, not saying it can't be improved however. I DO have issues with the designs for the underage girls outfits however....those are very sus

Yeah, the problem I take with Bunnyx’s is that it’s a bodysuit. If there was just more definition, like having actual boots, I wouldn’t complain as much.

Anonymous said:

I actually just really like the idea of the new bee being a genuinely nice person who becomes friends with Marinette. Not exactly close friends (since I like the idea of friendly working relationships without actual personal stakes in them). I also enjoy the idea of the new bee having some small animosity for Chat Noir- just because their personalities aren't the greatest mix. I also think that it would make sense for the miraculous of subjection to be at odds with the miraculous of destruction

Full agreement but we know how much the writers are resistant to have characters go against Chat.

Anonymous said:

Not gonna lie the scene where the girl squad gets akumatized almost makes it seem like they got akumatized on purpose, similar to Manon in Puppeteer 2(although she was a little kid who was probably just imagining she could enact revenge). And why can't they have a uniformed design, like they're a team but wear different colors, similar to the Sailor Senshi(like, Alya's the leader and wears orange, Rose wears pink, Alix wears green, Juleka wears purple, and Mylene wears yellow). It's so boring.

Mood.

Not to mention that WE ARE SO TIRED OF THEM GETTING AKUMATIZED INTO THE SAME AKUMA.

AT LEAST PALETTE SWAP THEM.

Anonymous said:

Relating to the Didn't Need Burrows and Treatment of Marinette bingo cards, have you considered making one for whenever the show fails at girl power? It could say things like "sexualized frames of teenage girls" "boy tells girl what to do" "girls don't get to keep Miraculouses", and "girls are forced to apologize whenever a situation goes wrong". And in the center, it could say "Don't show this to your daughter!"! Lol! What do you think?

lol I feel like I have enough cards, otherwise I would.

Anonymous said:

I saw another post that talked about Miraculous New York, and they theorized that it was rewritten to focus more on Marinette and Adrien in order to get viewers invested in the Love Square again after more people started to lose faith in the ship. Do you think that's a possibility?

I think so. The whole special comes off as trying to reassure love square shippers because of how hard it goes for him. I cut out Marinette’s crushing and it cuts like 18% from the episode, meaning it’s even worse than Season 3 (15%).

Anonymous said:

Maybe the point of the [break-up episodes] is meant to discourage people from shipping Lukanette and Adrigami too?

Spoiler alert: didn’t work.

Anonymous said:

Are we not gonna talk about how in one ask, somebody legit said "(long dreamy sigh) Viperion"? Like same.

RIGHT????

Same.

Anonymous said:

Ml fandom: I hate how Ladybug keeps secrets from Chat Noir! He sacrifices himself for her all the time and she never appreciates him for it! He has EVERY right to get mad at her!!

ML Fandom when Chat Noir does the same thing in the special: ....Wow Ladybug was way to harsh on Chat Noir!! She doesn’t appreciate him at all!! Shes so mean to him!

i hate it

Anonymous said:

Idk if it's just me, but a majority of the fandom is split in two; it's never one or the other "MARINETTE SUCKS AND IS A HORRIBLE PERSON GUARDIAN MARY SUE WHO SEXUALLY HARRASSES" or "ADRIEN SUCKS HE WAS NEVER ON MARINETTES SIDE" but im personally on the latter, but not to that extreme. i hate videos bashing marinette and then never acknowledge adriens faults

Yeah, the fandom gets more divided as time goes on because of the writers trying to increase the drama/tension.

Anonymous said:

I am PERSONALLY offended they gave Luka the snake miraculous. Snakes have such a negative connotation. A lot of people insult Lila by calling her a SNAKE. And now those ML writers DARE insult the best character in ML?! HOW DARE THEY!?????

I adore Viperion but I agree that I first heard he was getting snake and was like, “BUT MY BOI???”

It gets awkward too because other animals like the pig have negative connotations, like how Daizzi basically means “idiot/stupid” and they’re giving it to the freaking blond character, really???

Anonymous said:

I think that Ivanette would be even better if Marinette was plus-sized character.

I see why you’d think that. I just disagree because then it turns the ship into “let’s pair the heavyset characters together because they heavyset.”

Anonymous asked:

On the topic of romance failures and general series salt, my main issue right now is how the series puts so much focus on romantic relationships while failing to consider other levels of relationship or what they affect.

On the L² front I can completely buy Marinette being in love with Adrien. Most of the time she genuinely wants him to be happy and is ready to take a step back for him, however much it hurts. But in terms of romantic love? It. Is. A. Crush! But if we step back from the formula, what is there left between them? Their civilian relationship is held together by a “comedy” of errors and without that there is surprisingly little left. Well, besides two “best friends” desperately trying to make it happen because somehow they lost their individual characters and instead of being friends became matchmakers?

I too like Luka and Marinette together. Their relationship is pretty nice to see and all. But sometimes it feels like it happens in a dimension of its own, like the writers want to make the endgame clear in that the “sideships” can be easily cut out of the big “how they got together”-recaps. I especially miss reactions from and interactions with Juleka. She is Luka’s sister, Marinette’s friend, and IIRC someone aware of if not even a bit player in the great shipping game. She is in a prime position to step up and bring progress on all fronts: She can talk with Luka. She can either give Marinette helpful pointers or go “All in or nothing”, i.e. trying to make Marinette get her Adrien-feelings in order as she does not want her brother to get less than Marinette’s full heart. Similarly, she can counteract “friendly acts” and stop humiliating situations from escalating, or she herself can escalate them in the “All or Nothing”-scenario. Yet she remains basically a background character who gets little attention from the camera and almost no “non-focus identity”

As for Kagami, I may be too biased. *Any* positive Kagami/Marinette relationship is to me what Lukanette is to you. So naturally I have lots of opinions when it comes to her role ;) But can I just say that Adrien/Kagami is the weirdest ship for me? They have a few cute scenes and I think if they’d spend a lot more time together, they’d do each other good but I don’t know how they work. “No Hesitation” Kagami would lob Adrien’s head straight off with all his…everything. If we are meant to take Adrien’s love for LB seriously (and I guess we have to because how in the name of sanity is any form of the stated endgame gonna work otherwise???), how does Kagami fit into that picture as a girl who can hardly express emotions while Adrien is the definition of a guy who can not stop flirting or goes for all kinds of romantic gestures? Sometimes it feels more like a “social fit” and “Mommy/Daddy approves” kind of deal which is quite the shame! Normally I like these kind of relationships in fictions but they need a solid underlining or good development. One they haven’t and one the series has not been giving to anyone so far.

Yeah, the whole thing with the love square versus side ships ends up feeling extremely forced. Keeping Luka away and forcing Adrien into Lukanette episode are the biggest giveaways, basically a big fat sign that says, “We know Marinette would forget that Adrien exists if she hung around Luka for more than five minutes.”

AND YEAH, KAGAMI WOULDN’T PUT UP WITH ADRIEN’S GARBAGE. I liked Adrimi but it’s definitely more flawed than Lukanette.

Anonymous said:

Watched your opinion on the New York special and I agree with you. It was mediocre at best. It could have been something nice, like if they added Kagami and Luka, for example, so that we can get a bit of development from the new couples on season 4, so that it doesn’t feel rushed when they start dating on season 4. It could also be a good opportunity to see the other temporary heroes one last time, since Marinette technically has the miracle box.

They could have had an epic fight with the American Superheroes, maybe even giving the bee miraculous temporally to Aeon or Jess so that we didn’t need to see their awful and uncreative superheroes designs. It would have been nice if they made something more useful other than being characters that believe that Adrien and Marinette are “Meant to be”, like, we already got a ton of these already, couldn’t we get someone who didn’t feel something about this ship? It has so much wasted potential that I don’t even know how to start. Do you agree with anything I said?

I agree, yes. They could’ve easily thrown Luka/Kagami into the mix (or had Marinette/Adrien stay behind while flipping perspectives or something; flawed but they could make it work).

Anonymous said:

I'm rereading ladybugout and wow... the moment of silence after "chat deserves that kiss" gets me every time. Everyone stopping and just staring because wow he really just said that

Me whenever Chat Noir opens his mouth in the show.

Anonymous said:

I saw the Backwarder post you just talked about and yes, it is so totally ridiculous. They forgot another thing, though. Miraculous isn't just about comedy, action, and romance, it's about embarrassing Marinette. And the fact that almost everyone in the comments was acting like the medicine scene at the end was funny was just stupid and saddening to hear or read about, because it shows how people have been conditioned to hate and rally against Marinette without even realizing it. Granted, there was one lady who said it reminded her of her husband, so I guess that's okay(but all it means is that Adrien will be Marinette's--aka "his lady's"--husband like eeerrrgh!). And there was one person who said they liked that Juleka's advice because "If you're friend isn't willing to commit crimes for your happiness, is she even your friend?". But everyone else liked the ending. And I don't get the person who said we got "Subtle progression with Adrien and Marinette". We're right where we started.

Weeeeell, I understand the “comedy, action, romance” comment because all of those basically boil down to embarrassing Marinette or invalidating her. Comedy and romance goes without saying while action involves her dealing with Chat “Nice Guy” Noir.

Anonymous said:

Is it just me, or does Snow White's "Red Shoes" form look a lot like Marinette. I know, I know, Marinette is Chinese and Red Shoes is Korean, but they still look strikingly similar. They're bodies are really similar, too, but that might just be because animation tends to use eerily similar body types for its female characters on a whole. It's sad and it makes me think of how cute Marinette would be if she was fat. I also think Snow White was cuter than Red Shoes but that's kind of the point.

I think it’s the body type thing but that’s just a guess since I didn’t immediately make the connection.

I agree that Snow White is cuter.

Anonymous said:

Am I the only one who's never liked "destined to fail" characters? Basically this is when characters aren't allowed to be good at/succeed at something or else the whole universe will somehow fall apart. Think of how in The Amazing World of Gumball, if Richard gets a job, the world will be in complete and utter chaos. So he's better off as a lazy, bumbling dad. In Phineas and Ferb, Candace is always trying to rat out her younger brothers but if she gives up or succeeds something bad will happen.

TV Tropes put it the best: "Not only is she not allowed to succeed, but she's also not allowed to stop trying!"(conveniently under the Cosmic Plaything trope). I just don't like it because it shows that the writers just want to lead them on with the promise of success then snatch it away at the last minute. And now we're back at Miraculous Ladybug, where Marinette is humiliated every time she doesn't sign a gift that's for Adrien, and yet when she does, everyone in Paris DIES. Except for...HIM.

you: *mentions Candace*

me: [a million awful flashbacks]

Also, yeah, it’s so hard to watch, especially in “Chat Blanc” because it’s like, “Oh, you want to give a gift to a boy and you dArEd to use your powers for it? Congrats, but everyone else is DEAD and you can hang out with him as much as you want! You’re welcome!”

Anonymous said:

I think it’d become a “faintest idea blackout card”rather than a bingo.

(referring to my “Faintest Idea” card)

We’re getting there.

darkmoonravewolf said:

I hate that everything on that list could happen and very likely will

(referring to “Didn’t Need Burrow”)

Yeah, and it makes me sad :’)

Anonymous said:

That’s be real here. Miraculous ladybug is not a show about Marinette; Miraculous Ladybug is a show about Adrien. Adrien is the real main character.

Notice that when they focused on Adrien in “Lies,” they only cut back to Marinette (IN A SCENE THAT CAN’T EXIST) to have her fawn over him.

Anonymous said:

Is it just me or are Lady Noire's eyes huge? Maybe it's just the green but they seem way bigger than Marinette's

I’m not sure, but considering Rena’s facial structure being different from Alya’s, it wouldn’t surprise me.

asexual-individual said:

With what you've said about Adrien lacking a reason to exist outside of development for Marinette and Gabriel, I have to wonder how different the show would be if Chat Noir's identity was also kept from the audience. Adrien would still be there as himself, but he only gets as much focus as Alya, and Chat Noir's identity is treated as a mystery (a Tuxedo Mask type mystery, but a mystery all the same).

I see what you mean but it might cause Adrien+Chat’s screentime to feel excessive once the reveal happens, because suddenly their screentime gets combined and it’s like, “oh wow so the combined screentime is his then.”

Anonymous said:

I know that the kwami's really only exist so we can hear our protagonists' thoughts outloud (like what the Coraline movie did with adding Wybie to the story). But honestly, what's the point in having magical gods in the jewelry if you're not going to do anything with them?

Marketing with “cute” side characters.

guisendisguise said:

It's funny, originally, I had shipped Marichat in the sense that Chat and Mari start hanging out and both fall in love with the other's supposedly less perfect, more real selves. Then Luka was introduced and I ended up putting both lukanette and marichat at the same level. Then S3 hit and killed any love I had for Marichat. The writers themselves killed the Love Square for me. At this point, it's very clear they are living in a delusion where the Love Square could ever work narratively without Deus ex Machina or Deus Lo Vult (God wills it). Basically, they've gone past scraping the bottom of the writing skills barrel and are now shoulder deep in the hole they dug thru the bottom of said barrel. I'd like to point out that the bottom of the barrel is writing poop and now they're digging thru the useless plastic landfill the barrel was sitting on top of

Uggggh, yeah. Any appreciation I could’ve had for Marichat died in “Weredad.” I already didn’t like Adrien/Chat and then “Weredad” just showed his complete lack of... well, ANYTHING.

cosmostellar said:

Honestly feels like MLBs writers are going based off the "JUST IMAGINE EVERY POC CHARACTER YOU'RE WRITING AS WHITE" instead of, yknow, fleshing them out while developing them also in the context of their cultures and giving them these little things that the audiences who belong to the same minority can identify with. I don't mean "have Marinette walk in qipao 24/7" bcs thats just... bad on its own but man, /some/ casual acknowledgments of her culture would be nice.

Reading the sentence “JUST IMAGINE EVERY POC CHARACTER YOU'RE WRITING AS WHITE” physically hurts me.

Anonymous said:

Ok, I've always thought that Chloe was robbed of redemption (they held it in front of us, but then jerked it away while Astruc says, "She's irredeemable! We thought she was redeemable, but she wasn't :)!" What are your thoughts! Also, I just recently found your blog and I really like it :)

Thank you!

But I have no sympathy for bully characters, so I didn’t want Chloe redeemed. Maybe I’m still bitter about my own bullying experience, but I just wasn’t here for Marinette being forced to forgive Chloe, which is basically what they did until they backpedaled.

The time spent on her was wasted though and that I can agree on.

Anonymous said:

Me: Writes a 1k rant about how the tweet makes no sense as the "mistake" is about motivation and not the critical plot. Also me: Remembers that in MLB the plot always comes back to the romance. Finally me: Wonders why he got involved with the series post-S3 when all the red flags were already everywhere.

Mistakes were made.

Anonymous said:

I'm semi-catching up on miraculous, and- is it my impression, or does Kagami rebel against her mother more in few episodes she's in (even though her mother's influences on her seem to be stronger in general), than Adrien in the entire show? I /know/ that I don't want to see Adrien free himself from his father w/ the desperation I want to see Kagami free herself from her mother and realize that the standards she's held up to are unhealthy and too strong.

Yeah, I’m way more invested in Kagami than Adrien.

Anonymous said:

Am I the only one confused about whether the staff stopped caring and half-asses the series or cares too much and over-produces the hell out of it?

Nah. It really feels like they secretly hate the love square so they have to keep forcing it.

Anonymous said:

ngl I haven't watched any new episodes since Chameleon and I've been getting all that Miraculous News via tumblr to avoid that Marinette Brand Second Hand Embarrassment™

Understandable.

Anonymous said:

If they aired the 6th one first WHAT WHAT HAPPENED TO LEAD UP TO THIS???? WE ARE ON SEASON FOUR WITH TWO SPEICALS, GETTING A THIRD, AND ANY DEVELOPMENT WE HAD HAS GONE BACKWARDS, SUCKED, OR STATUS QUO YO-ED AWAY!!!!! HOW THE HECK DO WE GET ADRIENETTE FROM FOUR SEASONS OF NOTHING?????? I USED TO FANGIRL AT THIS NOW I AM TERRIFIED.

Answer: We don’t get Adrienette. We get forced love square and rushed/fake “development” of it while being constantly confused as episodes air out of order.

Anonymous said:

im sorry But adrienette has been suck in this limbo of one sidedness for 3 seasons. neither of them have become closer, neither of them have confided in one another, but somehow people still ship it? at least luka was able to make a move on marinette lol adrien still repeats the same boring “shes just a friend” line. adrienette is a really boring ship.

lol don’t apologize, you’re absolutely right.

nahte123456 said:

Very minor bit of salt to throw to the pile, but can this show just decide on how strong Miraculous holders are? Yes it's a cartoon and not the focus but in the Furious Fu episode we literally get Ladybug dodging lighting and then Su who seems mostly human and is at least slower then Fu was outspeeding her. It's distracting trying to figure out what is and isn't a serious threat in this show.

The deciding factor in the strength of the miraculous holders is “whatever works for the plot.”

Anonymous said:

At this point the only thing I'm excited for concerning Miraculous Ladybug is when it gets a reboot in like, a decade with actually competent writers

Best case scenario is that Zag goes bankrupt and Disney/Netflix picks up the series and gives it to competent people.

Problem is that the love square has been ruined so badly for me that even a “good” version of it wouldn’t be something I’d be into, but still.

Anonymous said:

Honestly, the problem with having all of Marinette's mistakes result in huge disasters (ex. Feast), is that is gives off the impression that teenagers aren't allowed to make mistakes. This show clearly doesn't like giving second chances to the protagonist, so why would life give one to you? Am I right, kids?

Exactly.

Marinette makes mistakes and suddenly the world is ending.

Anonymous said:

If your gonna watch the show, at least pirate the episodes so the writers dont get your support

Don’t worry, I have no interest in financially supporting the show.

Anonymous said:

ml in a nutshell: wasted potential, then giving themselves more potential, only to turn the rest of it into a dumpster fire

Yup, that’s it.

Anonymous said:

u know, when My Little Pony, Sofia The First, and fanfiction carries out character development, respect, romance, and the main plot better than the original show, especially when the shows mentioned above are aimed more at little girls and the original show is aimed at slightly older audiences... somethings wrong

*sigh*

And then it’s like--people will excuse the show because “it’s a kids’ show” and then I’m just “okay then, why are there actually good kids’ show?”

If shows get a pass for being for children then all childrens’ shows should just not try and be garbage since the standard is so low.

Anonymous said:

ive seen some cool fic ideas/concepts/reviews that made me think: ml could use so much more looking into how a character thinks in some situations. one fic i read had alya in chameleon (i know its been forever since the ep came out but hey) not question lila cus she thought: "hey, lb wouldnt befriend a bad person" w and added a plot line of lila making her think lb was cobsidering replacing rena rougue. like, just a few lines to make them seem better pls?

YES. Like, show us characters’ perspectives and why they’re rolling with the facts that they’re rolling with, otherwise they just end up looking like jerks.

We sort of got it in “Ikari Gozen” with Kagami but of course it was just to make Marinette look bad.

Anonymous said:

You know I’m honestly considering making reviews of this show and if I do I could create hour long rants about the show just from that mans twitter.

Yeaaaaaah, once you had in the Twitter stuff, it just becomes, “okay so this is going to add another hour or two then.”

Anonymous said:

Okay one thing that bothers me is how plain marinette's suits are despite being a DESIGNER. Her multimouse suit it just blocks of color and her ladynoir suit is just grey with green lines. I think the lines are supposed to represent actually clothes. Like the limes on the calves are supposed to make it look like boots but why not actually GIVE her boots. (Right, because she has to have a skintight suit unlike the boys who get some layers.)

THE SHEER DISRESPECT OF HAVING THE FASHION DESIGNER WEAR SUCH A PLAIN SUIT.

It also goes to show who really designs here, like oh, interesting, the girls get skin-tight simplistic bodysuits and the boys gets all the cool stuff--

Anonymous said:

I heard some people in my class saying they watched Miraculous Ladybug for the first time, and they were saying how good it was, and I was like: 'Oh you poor fools. You have NO idea what it's truly like.'

You know what they say: ignorance is bliss.

bat-anon said:

Isn’t it INTERESTING how in Frozer, Luka understands that Marinette is torn between her crushes and continues to support her even though he knows she probably won’t chose him, and in the exact same episode Chat Noir refuses to help save the city because Ladybug told him AGAIN that she wasn’t romantically interested in him? HMMM 🤔😑

dbfgjbdfjkgf

I’M REMINDED OF “FELIX” WHERE IT’S LIKE--THEY WERE CLEARLY TRYING TO SHOW HOW MUCH “BETTER” CHAT NOIR IS THAN FELIX, BUT LUKA WAS THE RESPECTFUL ONE.

Anonymous said:

You know what I want to see? An evil kwami, like they just want to commit crimes. No moral high grounds, just chaotic evil.

That’d be amazing just because I wouldn’t be able to take them seriously.

Anonymous said:

Watching S1 and S3 episodes back to back, it feels like reading salt fics at times, especially in regards to the L². Like, Marinette was happy about weird plans, she both needed and wanted the final push, and most of the time there was at least something coming out of it. Nowadays it just makes her sad, Alya and the girls act *against* her, and we get shipping for shipping's sake.

That’s a good point. The shift from Seasons 1 to 2 to 3 is rather noticeable.

Anonymous said:

I hate how Adrien's busy schedule seems to only matter when it's used to make Marinette feel bad, but the second Marinette has a bit more to do, it somehow has a negative effect on not only her, but also everyone/everything she cares about, like, what's up with that??

I’m reminded of “Lies” here and I hate it. :|

Anonymous said:

Honestly, the way the show treats teenage girls is horse ass. The show treats the teenage girls of this show as if they're stupid, naive, emotional, clumsy, and need a boy to tell them what opinions to have. Marinette is always treated like the show's punching bag and blamed for everything that goes wrong because she's "emotional" or "obsessed with Adrien", Chloe could've been redeemed but the writers would rather keep her a brain-dead Alpha Bitch Valley Girl(even though Gabriel and Felix, the latter of whom is a teenage boy introduced in one episode, get to be treated as redeemable, despite the things they do being far, far worse), and Lila is a conniving, self-absorbed fox.

And even though Kagami seems better, she's still roped into the "girls catfight over an oblivious guy" cliche and so far, all of her akumatizations have been because of Adrien. Whenever Marinette tries to move on from Adrien the other characters tell her what's good for her and steer her in the "right" direction because she apparently can't think for herself, and the writers LOVE to use the girl squad to tell us who Marinette should be with, because they apparently know better than she does.

Plus the show loves to treat all the girls as the same, making them all either fight over Adrien or be obsessed with shipping, as if teenage girls are all one assimilating, homogenized group(also when they treat Marinette as if she's "just as bad as Chloe", rinse and repeat for the other ladies.). Honestly, the show feels like it was written by those types of people who think "teenage girls are the worst" so they make them all mood-swingy, obsessive, showoffs, emotional, and downright clingy.

Plus the way Thomas Astruc talks about the female characters on Twitter is even worse, and only serves to make this more evident: he claims Marinette "has poor control over her emotions"(all the while calling Adrien "perfect"), that Chloe was racist in Kung Food "because she's stupid"(so rather than having that scene serve as a lesson on respecting other's cultures, he just did it to pick on Chloe and make her look "stupid"), that she's incapable of being redeemed, that Lila's unlikable but Gabriel and Felix aren't(even though he claimed Felix was a terrible character and a "cliche", that's not what the show says my guy), and other such nonsense.

Other Twitter users have also called out Miraculous Ladybug and its stereotypical treatment of teenage girls. The only shows I've ever seen do this worse are those pretentious "darker" Magical Girl "deconstructions" aimed at grown men such as Madoka Magica and Yuki Yuna, as well as most shonen/seinen shows such as Naruto and Death Note, which says a lot. Honestly, whenever I feel like watching a show with empowering and respectful depictions of teenage girls that treats them as bright and intelligent and actually unique from one another, I just watch Equestria Girls, Liv and Maddie, LoliRock, ANT Farm, Moesha, PreCure, or Sailor Moon. Because the way the show acts towards them is deplorable, absolutely deplorable.

Yes to all of the above. Almost all of the girls are involved in love affairs in some way, the two teenage girls are irredeemable while Felix got a sympathetic backstory right away (Chloe took forever to get hers which is a failure), and Marinette is flawed because she’s “too emotional” (a misogynistic stereotype).

Anonymous said:

Hi, I'm the anon who got upset at the lady who made the "Miraculous Ladybug is a Mess" rant, and yes, thank you zodiacspirit17 for liking and agreeing with my rant! I'm glad someone else saw that video! And ugh, Marinette learning to love Chat Noir? Really? I don't remember that line but I also don't want to go back and revisit it to make sure so I'll take your word for it. Ew. That was actually one of the things I hated about the Glaciator scene. Chat was supposedly comforting Marinette by taking her to the rooftop where he planned Ladybug's date, and yet only Marinette finds out about Chat's crush on Ladybug and comforts him on that(while rethinking her feelings), while all Chat knows is that Marinette's heart was also broken. He never asks who it is, or tries to help her get over her crush even if he doesn't know it's coincidentally him.

I know it's because of the "love square" but it's unfair that only Chat's love problems are directly addressed. Come to think of it, the reason Chat took Marinette to the rooftop...I know he was doing it in-universe to help her instead of intruding on her personal feelings(which might have also been why he didn't ask her who her crush was, he was probably thinking along the lines of "we don't have to talk about it right now, we can just have fun!"), but meta-wise, since we know she's Ladybug, the writers were probably trying to tell her "See? This is what you could've been doing, but you missed it. Shame on you!" That's a huge issue I have with the show: characters will do things in-universe to help Marinette, but the show has a different motive in mind. Compare to how Tikki gave actual advice to Marinette in Puppeteer 2, but the writers intended that for the statue scene so they could embarrass her in front of Adrien and the thousands of eyes watching the show(except we're not laughing.). Even if characters do support her, the writer is using them as props for her ritualized humiliation. And yet Luka is the problem somehow.

If Marinette needs to learn how to love Chat Noir, then it should at least be balanced out by Adrien learning to Marinette. I'm sick of this double standard that "girls need to learn to accept boys who like them but guys can do what they want". Another thing she said was that "Marinette needs to learn to define herself outside of who she's crushing on." NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. You see, unlike Adrien, Marinette HAS a life outside of who she's crushing on: she has school, she has Kitty Section, she has her "girl squad", she has her parents, she has her outside family, she babysits Alya's and Nino's siblings, and she has OH YEAH HER FASHION DESIGNING! I didn't even count being a superhero since Adrien does that, too. She has so many things to do outside of Adrien, and yet the fact that she makes gifts for Adrien or dreams about Adrien or wants to have kids with Adrien somehow makes her nothing but an "Adrien fangirl"?

First of all, she's the bloody protagonist?! That's such a "Real Women Don't Wear Dresses" argument, that she can't have her own life AND be in love at the same time! And somehow her crushing on Luka also means her life revolves around him, too! But Adrien's life doesn't revolve around Ladybug even though he doesn't really have anything going for him in his ordinary life? Outside of being rich, hot, white, and male, that is? What are his interests and hobbies, besides what Gabriel lets him do to pass the time? He doesn't even like modeling! And the Agreste plot is more about Gabriel, Emilie, and Nathalie than it is about him.

And what about his friendship with Nino? He didn't even care that Nino was getting strung along by Lila with the others! What about his friendship with Chloe that also waxes and wanes? Granted, Chloe's not a GOOD person, which that lady acknowledged, but she at least tried to change and has more development than him, the writers just won't let her change. I hate when people come for Marinette for doing literally anything when the show won't let her have agency and progress. It's so unfair of her and I wish they could see that. These double standards are driving me insane and they're sexist(maybe even a little bit racist, too), and it hurts even more when a woman's doing those things.

(I had to cut off some of this ask because I didn’t get all of it, so I cut it off at the point where it still seemed like a full ask.)

I FEEL THE “GLACIATOR” THING SO BAD. It hurts even worse when you realize that “Frozer” has to take place after “Glaciator,” so Chat Noir heard that Marinette has love problems and then ignored it to ask her for advice about his own love problems later on. The total lack of insensitivity???

Also, the idea that Marinette’s life would revolve around her crush on Luka is stupid. It’s the exact opposite, in fact.

Meanwhile, Adrien has so little going for him and the “interesting” parts of him involve who he’s connected to or what his father has forced him into.

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posthungergamessyndrome · 3 years

Text

so here’s my long overdue review of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes that no one asked for. I finally read the book, well listened to the audiobook, coz i dunno how to read a book anymore.

This book was everything I expected it to be and also not. Definitely the first two parts was easily predictable, we all kinda assumed that was the general arc that story would take. So while I found the first two parts enjoyable, learning more about the history of the games and learn more of Capitol, i wasn’t really hooked until the third part.

But let me say this first tho, Ms. Suzanne Collins, you never disappoint. Also I have questions and I hate that she wasn’t able to go on a book tour (I haven’t read her Q&A tho).

I still have the same qualms as i did about the prequel as i did before I read it. While I get the early records of the games were shoddy, and the 10th Hunger Games was erased but for one copy hidden in some vault, that doesn’t matter, what matter is Snow knows.

So If Snow had that relationship with the Games and Lucy, the first victor of d12, a lot of the decisions he made in the trilogy made no sense.

I get it, he wanted to forget, it’s decades until Katniss came along. While there might be parallels, Lucy and Katniss are very different characters. But all I can think off is the reason he didn’t kill Katniss sooner, was it really because she would end up a martyr or rallying cry for the district, which happened anyways, or he was practically disassociating the moment Katniss was reaped?

Were Katniss and Peeta unintentionally triggers to so many of his hidden traumas that’s why he made so many misteps? Katniss singing the meadow song to Rue, triggered. Peeta mentioning the Valley song, triggered. Mockingjay, triggered. The Hanging Tree, triggered.

Was he so busy crying in the shower that he wasn’t able to stop Seneca Crane from making bad calls during the 74th Games? Two winners from the same district, would Snow really okay’d that himself?

And also, I’ve always thought that anything he did towards Peeta was coz he wanted to hurt Katniss. But no, he wanted to hurt that boy. Peeta reminds him of his young self, at least the young person everyone saw him as, charming, smart, and loyal. And in a way, had Peeta been born in the Capitol and was among Snow’s contemporaries, Snow would have seen him as his ultimate rival.

Coz Snow was smart and knows how to manipulate people, but Peeta does it a lot better and a lot more successfully. With Snow, it’s right in front of his face and he still misses it. Often he is so close to getting it. How could he not have thought of the star-crossed lovers angle? How?? When one Peeta Mellark thought of it?

Which idk if there’s fanfics of that yet, but I need to read them asap, Katniss and Peeta and teen Snow, make it happen.

(But I was looking at my notes and I wrote probably the reason Snow didn’t think of the star crossed lovers angle because it was about his survival not about Lucy’s. Lucy was at best, seen as his possession. Even at the moments he was honestly in love with her, he still saw her as someone belonging to him only. )

Snow had two relationships going on: with Sejanus and with Lucy. I did find his relationship with Sejanus more interesting, because I think it’s that relationship that shaped him more that his relationship with Lucy.

I did like and even at some points enjoyed their Slytherin-Hufflepuff BFFship going on, coz despite how Snow let us know what he really thinks versus what he actually says, he was drawn to protect Sejanus, even though he’s reluctant about it or insist that he was made to do it or it’s also to benefit himself.

And I’m not saying there’s queerbaiting in this book, but certain pairings in this book makes more sense to ship than Johanna and Katniss.

With Lucy, i know many were wary or didn’t want Snow to have a relationship with her. For me i was open to it, at least intrigued to see where it will go or how will it be handled.

Honestly while it is still better written than most YA romances, I found it very insta-love. Again, my sense of timeline in this novel might be different coz I was listening to the audiobook instead of reading it, but they fell in love pretty quick.

While listening to the audiobook, i thought, if their relationship is at this point it must have been weeks since the reaping and the games haven’t started yet, and then Snow says it’s just been five days. They were making out I think by day 3 or something.

Maybe because I knew they relationship was doomed from the start and we know how Snow ends up, I was amused by certain moments in their relationship, coz all I can think about it is, oh honey no.

but also, I am mad that Ms. Collins is capable of writing amazing fluff moments in the midst of a dystopian world, and she wastes them on Snow and Lucy? Where was all that for Katniss and Peeta? i was given crumbs in the trilogy, Snow and Lucy made out so many times, at one point I even thought they were going to sleep together, like how dare you Ms. Collins.

For the many years we debated the meaning behind The Hanging Tree, Ms Collins, said no hun, this is what the songs means, let me tell you it’s origin story. And omg Suzanne, that was fucked up. Thanks.

One of the things I was worried about for this prequel is that while it is set in the future, the messages in it will seem outdated because a lot has changed since the trilogy came out.

But she wrote this book well before it was announced in 2019, before it was released in 2020, but she still made it very relevant for today and I think the messaging of this prequel would be more resonant in the future, like the trilogy is.

She touched upon how we really value children, and that immediately reminded me of school mass shootings and how we haven’t done anything about it. She lives in Sandy Hook when the shooting happened so this makes sense she makes a statement about it. And now we are sending kids to school in a middle of a pandemic for political reasons not because we are concerned about their education.

And there’s also mentions of a pandemic in a middle of a war, let’s say it was a whole mental experience alternating between listening to the audiobook and watching the news on January 6.

I also loved the lines: “why do people think the only thing they need for a revolution is anger?” and “we pour money into industries not people.”

While it’s almost unbelievable that the modern hunger games was merely a student group project by a bunch of privileged rich kids and one person who thinks slavery is okay ended up writing the whole thing anyways, that’s basically how this country and our system of governance was founded.

Dr. Gaul is also every Security and Development professor I had in grad school who teaches that war never ends and it’s not about winning it’s about control to a class of future leaders at the state department, white house, and pentagon. i mean, it’s the cornerstone of US foreign policy since end of WW2.

While also listening to this book, I am dead sure that Suzanne could write a different version of Catching Fire where Katniss and Peeta were mentors and they uncover the hidden 10 hunger games tape, and it still will be a be hella of a story.

It also makes sense that the two characters that could possibly tell us or Katniss the connection of Snow to Lucy were the ones who can’t talk: Mags and Tigris.

obviously lucy ended up in 13, possibly related to Alma Coin coz where else will she get that personal hatred against Snow?

Snow could have at least picked Clemensia or Lys, but Livia? i guess make sense since her offspring ended up being Plutarch’s assistant.

I feel like if i read the prequel before the trilogy, it would be a different reading experience. But at the same time, Snow, while he had his moments, is an unlikeable character even as an anti-hero, and his moral stand point is something i dont agree with, coz you know, he’s basically a republican. it’s like reading a book about a young Mitch McConnell, doesn’t matter if the system hurt him sometimes, as long as it hurts others more and keeps him in control, and i gag. I don’t think i would finish reading the prequel if i started with it instead of the trilogy.

but it does solidifies my theory that Snow’s evil is not because he is out of touch with the rest of panem, he knows suffering that’s why he knows how to exploit it. He is not oblivious to the problems, but he arrived at different conclusions or convictions, because again he supports the system that controls his enemies, even if the system is cruel to him too. Again, a Republican. Don’t be one, don’t date one.

I do wonder tho if he made good with champagne tuesdays when he became president.

I don’t see how this prequel works as a movie adaptation tho, even if turned into three parts. It makes more sense for it to be a series, so if lionsgate hasn’t declared bankruptcy before they can adapt this into screen, maybe with the state of movies right now due to the pandemic, they will be more convinced to make this into a series for Netflix or to launch their own streaming service.

#the ballad of songbirds and snakes #coriolanus snow #the hunger games

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lecliss · 4 years

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Yeah so just finished Omniverse for a second time. Forgot everything half way through season 6 so that was all pretty much new to me. I feel, I dunno. Maybe cuz my brain does recall that I've gone through this before so I wasn't all that emotional about it. I'm usually such a crybaby when I finish shows. But I do rarely rewatch them so I guess I don't know what my usual reaction is to that.

I dunno. I think it's more that I didn't really... care? The Maltruant plot is, meh. Probably because he's an entirely new villain so for him being the 'final boss', it didn't mean much. It being surrounded by a season of content that I was about halfway disappointed by too? Made it much more meh. So it wasn't all that emotional.

However, I got super teary eyed when Ben was rapidly transforming through all his aliens and I recognized it was in the order he first transformed into them throughout the entire series. That was powerful and I was trying not to breakdown, lol. Also the universe creation scene was pretty so I felt emotional from that too, but otherwise not much else came from me aside from laughs about the funnies.

Sorry this is gonna be long and kinda ranty, but I just feel like I need to get it out. Season 8 did not feel powerful. It was the final season and they obviously knew that since they were wrapping up loose ends with Vilgax and Charmcaster. That was nice and all, but I feel like, to me at least, because I could recognize that and the episodes didn't feel so dramatic and meaningful about it, it didn't matter much. Like, 'okay time to wrap everything up and get it all in its place to end this show' and it didn't feel like anything more than that.

I also have problems with the way Rook was handled and Skurd kinda ties into that. Rook got great development and once I recgonized that I feel like he became an even better character than before. But because his relationship with Ben was now so close, it became harder to use the 'we don't get along but we have to work together anyway' type antics. Skurd was introduced to create more alien toys to sell, that I've read before and am pretty certain that's confirmed(and I also don't mind that since I understand selling toys is a big part of the franchise anyway). Ben and Skurd now have that 'we don't get along but we have to work together anyway' type relationship. And I noticed Rook seemed to talk a lot less in season 8, barring his final focus episode with Kundo and Fistina.

Therefore, Skurd became, in my eyes, a replacement for Rook, and Ben started to, sort of, bully Rook. Like, obviously in a way friends do, but also in a way that friends do when one friend is being harsh and doesn't recognize that what they're saying is actually bothering their friend. And that really bothered me. Rook became a target for Ben to bully for fun and I'm not gonna blame Ben, because I think that was just a shitty writing decision.

I also have a problem with "The Secret of Dos Santos", not only because of Ben's bullying of Rook in that episode, but because of the severe romance problem the entire show has and is shown off very noticeably in that episode. I just can't understand bickering with a guy and then you think he's gonna apologize but he doesn't but he does show you a cool helpful thing and then... you kiss him??? Even tho he didn't apologize?? I'm not cishet and I do know how to write women so, okay then. Go ahead and make no logical sense I guess.

And I'm sure all of us are bothered by the romance writing in OV(in varying ways of course), so no need to make people see the hundredth rant about it or whatever, but Imma just say a bit anyway about generalness of it.

I've never liked romance in Ben 10. I don't remember my opinion on the Benwolf episode from the original series, but I know I liked 10yo Kai at least a bit. I also liked Julie. I just, didn't think she was a great romance choice for Ben. And there's the thing. Little crushes are fine by me, but full on dating and romance getting involved in an action series bothers me. I never felt like Ben needed a girlfriend, and I'm in camp 'if he has a girlfriend, a completely normal human one isn't a good choice for a superhero'. The trope only causes unnecessary problems in my eyes. Getting kidnapped and making plans that have to be ruined when hero duty calls, those are things that happened in UAF. We didn't need that kind of stuff imo.

And I'm fine with Gwevin since they both were always involved in the hero work, but the drama annoyed me, especially that particular Charmcaster incident in UAF. Actually, thank you OV for not doing that with them this time. But, Ben 10 never needed romance. I have ships I like anyway tho, but the unnecessary-ness of it in UAF and the poor writing in OV was not needed. Also, I'm the kind of person that hates harems. Ben Tennyson, a 16yo, did not need a harem.

Otherwise, I love the show. Removing nostalgia from the original series, OV is definitely my favorite series(cue me getting shot). I love Kenny too, so it's not like I despise that Ben ended up Kai, just how it was written that they did not get along at all and even seemed to have that same bickering as adults. It just was not enjoyable.

I keep going back to that, but anyway, still, I treasure the show and everything good it did. It gave us Rook, Ester, and my favorite alien, Ball Weevil, returned many character designs to their roots of the original series, brought back Lucy, the two part season finale with the other Bens made me cry, and so did the season finale with Malware. I will forever stand by the statement of Ben talking with younger Ben and getting Feeback back being the greatest scene in the entire show.

Oh, right, and about the Rooters. Fuck Servantis. I will slaughter the man with my own bare hands and I will make it slow and painful. Anyway! The show put in effort to make these retcons related to them make sense. I'll give them that credit. But the problem lies with UAF and its decision to make Kevin an alien and all the Devin backstory stuff. The original intention in the original series was for him to be a special kind of human(basically a mutant iirc) and UAF made him an alien instead. OV wanted to go back to the orginal intention, but needed a way for that to make sense.

It was a mess, but I understand what the point of it was. Something had to be done to make it make sense and there was no way it would be a situation that didn't bother at least some people. I find 'your memories were a lie the whole time' as a form of retcon to be such a bad trope, but what else was there to do? For the decisions they made to handle it, it was perfectly fine. I just wanna torture Servantis is all because the Rooters got off way too scott free. They essentially had no punishment and I want to see the blood of child abusers spilled on the floor. Immediately.

Anyway, again. I love the show. Will always love it. I thank OV very much for all the joy it gives me and at the end of the day, it's a fucking cartoon. I love it, I hate some things in it, but I can put it down and go care about something else if I wanted to. I'm not gonna let the parts that bother me actually ruin my day or anything. Cuz again, it's a cartoon and I may not feel like it, but I do have a life. And I'm gonna spend the limited time I have in this shitty life by enjoying the things I like, which is the parts of OV that make me happy. 💚 Mainly Rook. And Ester. And the Evil Bens. And many more things, actually. Okay, I think the emotions are finally setting in. Oh god, I want it all back already!!! 😭😭😭😭

#ben 10 #ben 10 omniverse #long post #child abuse mention

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not-close-to-straight · 4 years

Text

More Than Words (Thirteen)

Ho-ho-holy long chapter, guys. The boys work through their newest level of intimacy with their patented brand of disaster flirting, Peter learns more about Wade’s past/ Vanessa/ Eddie and Venom and makes a sort of sweet confession to his Alpha, then we top it all off with some fluffy goodness. I love love demisexual!Pete.

Generic TW for mentions of violence related to Wade’s past and Eddie/Venom. Violence/gore to some extent is canon to both those characters, but it’s just mentioned and moved on from in this chapter. Eddie/Venom’s story is heartbreaking in this verse, so mind the additional warnings in chapter.

MTW MASTERLIST HERE

********************* “Go back to sleep, Pete.” Wade mumbled. “S’too fuckin’ early for you to be looking at me so much. I can feel you staring.”

“The hell you can.” Came the pert reply. “Your eyes are closed, you don’t know what I’m doing.”

“How are you this sassy this early in the morning?” Wade rolled to his back and opened his eyes purposefully wide. “There, now my eyes are open and would you look at that? You’re staring at me. Go back to sleep.”

“Can’t sleep.” Peter pillowed his chin onto Wade’s chest, but when the Alpha’s gaze flickered in concern, he corrected, “I don’t want to sleep. I’ve only been awake a few minutes, though. I slept last night, don’t worry.”

“Glad you slept, baby boy.” Wade let his arm rest over the Omega’s shoulders, holding Peter comfortably close. “So why are you staring at me?”

“Cos you’re gorgeous.” Peter shrugged as if the reply made all the sense in the world , and turned his head so his ear lay over his mate’s heart. “Why wouldn’t I stare?”

“Sure, Pete.” The Alpha chuckled quietly and closed his eyes again. “Whatever you say. I’m surprised you’re even coherent right now, hard as you went under for me last night.”

“I was pretty far gone, wasn't I?” Newly acquired habit had Peter tracing the still raised scars at Wade’s side where the mountain lion had ripped into him. “Felt good, though. Felt like coming home after being gone for a long time, like-- like settling. Diving into the ocean and not being afraid of drowning even though I can’t breathe. I dunno, it’s hard to explain.”

“Thought you said it felt like flying.” Wade rubbed his thumb over the Omega’s bonding spot, moving carefully over the bruised bite mark. “What’s with all the different descriptions now?”

“Are you saying I can’t describe how you make me feel in two different ways?” Peter pinched at Wade’s side in playful exasperation. “I’m a journalist, Alpha. A writer. I’ve got a hundred different ways to describe any given circumstance, so don’t test me cos I’ll unleash them all.”

“Don’t test you.” Wade chuckled again. “Brat.”

The Omega leaned into another pass at his bonding spot and trilled encouragingly when Wade lingered over the bite. “Doesn’t hurt, you know. Just feels good.”

“You’re lying.” Wade felt gingerly around the twin punctures. “That has to hurt, sweetheart. I bit you real hard and outta heat you don’t get all the hormones to take the pain away. You’re gonna be black and blue for a few days.”

“It doesn’t hurt.” Peter maintained and he meant every word. “Just feels good, just feels like…” he hesitated. “...you. Worth the bruising.”

“Worth the bruising, huh?” The Alpha dropped his free hand to Pete’s butt and used it as leverage to haul his mate up along his body. The moment they were face to face, he planted a firm kiss on Peter’s lips and asked, “Does that mean I can bite you some more?”

It was a deceptively loaded question-- a quiet check on the bounds of their new enough, a not subtle request to do everything about last night all over again, an acknowledgement that maybe last night was further than either had planned to go, and the chance to talk about what happened before the day intruded and conversation was shelved for later.

A deceptively loaded question and Peter smiled when he read all the extras in his mate’s eyes.

“A thousand steps, right?” He smoothed his index finger along Wade’s jawline, tapped lightly at the Alpha’s nose. “Between knowing we are meant to be together and actually bonding.”

“That’s right.” The Alpha turned his nose into Peter’s palm and left a tiny kiss on his fingers. “A thousand steps.”

“MJ would never let me live this down.” Peter’s cheeks went pink with anticipation. “But yes Alpha, please bite me some more.”

Wade growled right on cue, flashing his hooked fangs and making the Omega shriek in surprise and then laugh out loud at him. “Oooh, scary vicious Alpha. Please bite me.”

“Maybe once you’re healed up and not so sore.” Wade licked over the sharp points, then tugged Peter in for another quick kiss. “Why would MJ never let you live something like that down? What’s wrong with admitting you like your mate to bite you?”

“Ugh, it’s stupid.” Peter settled back onto Wade’s broad chest, nuzzling at the Alpha’s throat and leaving a tiny bite of his own. “The day before I went to meet Cable, MJ was swooning over the Alpha in my romance novel. He’s fanged and has entirely too many muscles and awkwardly prominent nipples--”

Wade snorted a laugh and the Omega grinned. “--and she was saying how much fun it would be to reduce an Alpha to their basest instincts and have them push you up against a door and you know… grrrr.”

“Fuck, your growl is so sweet.” The Alpha’s hips lifted helplessly in an instant, interested reaction to the noise from his mate and Peter ground back into him for a few seconds, breath stuttering as he felt Wade thicken beneath him. “Do it again and then keep talking.”

“I think if I give my ultra scary growl again, there won’t be much talking at all.” Peter decided and Wade shrugged in unrepentant agreement. “Anyway, she said all that, I accused her of just being a horny Omega in need of a good knotting--”

“--and here you are wanting to be bitten.” Wade finished, and even though he couldn’t see the Omega’s face at the moment, he knew from experience that Peter’s blush had darkened. “Does this mean I can call you a horny Omega and accuse you of needing a good knotting?”

“Do that and you might get bit where you don’t wanna get bit.” Peter threatened. “Let’s see how much of that particular appendage grows back!”

The Alpha made a high pitched, hilariously girly noise of outright fear, promptly letting go of his mate to cover more sensitive areas while the Omega all but cackled in delight at having won the upper hand in the conversation.

Wade muttered and grumbled at being threatened in his own house, but eventually he settled down and after receiving a conciliatory kiss on the cheek, even turned them in bed so they were tangled up together, nose to nose and forehead to forehead.

For a while all was quiet in the cabin, Alpha and Omega content to lie together in the early morning stillness and bask in the newness of their new normal. It was a relief to be laughing together again, comforting to hold each other all night long. There was an undercurrent of arousal lingering in their scents after the previous evening, but despite the nudity and occasional kisses, both lay relaxed and at ease together.

Wade lifted his chin to leave a kiss on Peter’s forehead and to breathe in his mate’s changing scent, possessiveness flashing through his core when he scented lines of cedar again. Peter’s scent was changing to resemble Wade’s own earthier tones and when the Omega made a surprised noise and cuddled closer over Wade’s bonding spot, he knew Peter had discovered the sweetness winding through the usual dark of licorice as well.

“You smell good today, my mate.” The Omega left an open mouthed kiss over Wade’s pulse. “Stay in bed a little longer with me.”

Wade didn’t answer, not out loud at least, but Peter hummed happily when the Alpha’s grip tightened at his side and Wade’s scent mellowed in contentment.

He felt as if he could read everything from his Alpha today, every heart beat more clear and each breath more defined than Peter had ever noticed before. Every inch of Wade seemed important, from the length of Wade’s legs to the span of his chest, the callouses on the Alpha’s palms and the oddly familiar texture to the Alpha’s skin.

Peter’s neck was throbbing from the bites and even the bit of pain twisted into awareness of his mate-- the curve of fangs and prick of dangerous edges, hazel eyes flashing red and a growl that got deeper the more Wade wanted.

That line of thought sent warmth skittering down the Omega’s spine, spreading into his core and settling as an ache between his legs, and the Alpha shifted next to him, murmuring, “Easy, my mate.” when Peter’s scent hazed in desire. “What are you thinking about?”

“N-nothing.” Peter bit his lip to quiet a little gasp, and tried for a more offended tone, “My thoughts are none of your business, nosy Alpha.”

“Ridiculous.” Wade left a quick swat on Peter’s rear and the Omega giggled. “Tell me why you scent so sweet.”

“I wasn’t really thinking about anything.” Peter admitted after a moment. “Just about how much I can feel from you this morning. Last night you asked me if I could feel you, and I thought it would be the same as before, but it’s more this morning. I can feel so much of you.”

“I can feel a lot from you too.” Wade slid his hand up Peter’s back to tangle in his hair. “And you don’t need to tell me everything you’re thinking, there’s only one reason your scent changes like that. Settle before you make me crazy, alright?”

“I’m settling.” Peter promised, and this time when his scent changed it was with a swell of wonder at the strength of their still growing bond.

For most of his life, Peter always assumed a bond was just a bite and a knot, the necessary physical joining of bodies to consummate a legal union. He’d known some couples who had never bonded at all, rings sparkling on their fingers but no silvered mating bite at their throats, and he hadn’t seen a difference between those relationships and others marked with teeth.

In a world where scent matching didn’t exist, and biologies were muted with suppressants and blockers, Peter had decided mating was completely unnecessary for a successful, long term relationship. There was no valid reason for someone to wear a mark of ownership other than a ring, what was the point of an Omega willingly giving an Alpha the chance to influence so much of their hormones and emotions and day to day life?

Marriage gave plenty of that, there didn’t need to be a biological component as well.

And perhaps that was still true for some people-- mating less necessary than marriage, perhaps neither set of vows necessary at all. Peter hadn’t planned to do either of those things but here he was snuggled in bed with Wade his Alpha his mate, and Peter had never been so sure this was exactly what he wanted.

These few months with Wade had made it plainly obvious to the Omega that mating was more than a simple bite and a knot. It was making room for that person in every aspect of life, it was feeling thoughts align and heartbeats sync and scents combine, it was wanting to know everything about them and more importantly, being allowed to know everything.

Bonding meant that questions were answered and the searching was over, that the pang of empty would be filled, bonding meant safety and security, bonding meant knowing and being known and even without a silver mark at his throat, even without having experienced the weight of his Alpha’s knot--

“This is exactly what I want. What I was searching for my whole life. I can’t believe I finally found you.”

Peter didn’t mean to say the words out loud, but the Alpha heard the barely there whisper anyway and his entire being surged in happiness.

“My mate.” he answered in the same, nearly inaudible whisper and because there wasn’t any words to do the moment justice, Wade simply pressed Peter back into the pillows and fit his teeth over his Omega’s bonding spot, re-breaking skin and tasting blood all over again.

It hurt but the pain turned to drugging pleasure within a breath, and both Alpha and Omega moaned at the spark that resonated through their bodies. Last night Peter had arched into the bite and begged for more but this morning he went pliant and submissive beneath his Alpha, slim fingers gentle at Wade’s scalp as quiet permission to stay, one long leg hooked around Wade’s knee as a silent plea to never let go.

I love you.

My mate.

Mine.

“I’m sorry about using an Alpha command on you by the way.” Wade said later, after they’d dragged themselves from bed and got ready for the day. “I um-- I don’t like that sorta thing and to be honest, nowadays you get in a lotta trouble for forcin’ an Omega’s biology against them like that. You know I didn’t mean any harm and I’m real glad it all worked out, but I’m sorry all the same. I won't do it again.”

“I know you didn’t mean any harm.” Peter answered promptly, pushing aside his questions about what sort of trouble Alpha’s got into for using commands, and reassuring his mate, “And you’re right, it all worked out. I settled and hushed and last night was amazing. It’s fine.”

“I won’t do it again.” the Alpha repeated. “I promise.”

“Well-l-l-l--” Peter buttoned his coat and shrugged. “Here’s something I never thought I would say. But I don’t mind if you tell me what to do sometimes, Alpha. You’d never hurt me.

“No.” Wade said immediately. “I sure wouldn’t. But Pete, I won’t--”

“I’m not saying you have to.” Peter stepped close to his mate and stood on his toes to kiss Wade sweetly. “I’m saying I trust you not to hurt me. Now come on. That goat’s gonna headbutt me half down the mountain if we don’t get in there and milk her.”

“Fine.” Wade hooked an arm around Peter’s waist and yanked him close for another kiss, bruising the Omega’s bottom lip with his fangs. “But then we should--”

His eyes widened when Peter’s scent rocked with arousal. “P-Pete? What’s up?”

“Chores.” Peter squeaked and turned on his heel, practically running out the door to the barn and leaving one confused and halfway to turned on Alpha behind in the cabin.

“Uhhhh… wow.”

*************

“This is nice.” The next afternoon, Peter knelt and ran his hand over a fur rug that definitely hadn’t been on the floor that morning, and looked up at his mate curiously. “Where did you get this? Do you have more storage I don’t know about? I feel like I would have noticed a big bearskin rug before now.”

“I keep it wrapped up and boxed in the lean to.” Wade passed his flask to Peter, watching with a smirk as his mate took a very tiny, very cautious sip of the moonshine. “Few years ago I helped some trappers that got caught up in a storm, let them hunker down in the cabin for a few days. They didn’t have much by way of supplies so I shared mine, and in return, they gave me this rug. It’s worth all sorts’a money down in the city, but I kept it instead. The money doesn’t do me a whole lot of good since I never leave Haven, and now it fits just right in the cabin.”

“Huh.” The Omega said a quiet prayer of relief that the rug wasn’t one with head and teeth and claws included, and turned a corner over to look at the stitching on the other side. “Well why’d you bring it in now?”

“Is this gonna bother you like dealing with the chickens bothered you?”

Peter smiled at the reminder of how panicked he’d been-- how close to veganism he’d been-- those first few days and shook his head. “No. I never felt any certain way about fur products. I never used them because I’d look frankly ridiculous in a fur coat, and taxidermy makes me uncomfortable but this rug doesn’t have eyes so no worries.”

Wade grunted in approval, and the Omega repeated, “Why did you bring it out now? It’s been cold for weeks, why the sudden need for a bear skin rug?”

“You spent a whole week staring at that spot.” Wade nodded towards the now covered area in front of the fire where he’d died. “And you don’t stare at it a whole lot now but I caught you looking at it last night and you uh--” the Alpha shook his head. “--you looked so sad, Pete. Figured it was about time I did something about it.”

“You’ve done plenty about me being sad.” Peter’s hand went automatically to his neck, to the still fresh bruise from yesterday morning. “I don’t need a rug--”

“I don’t want you to look at anything in here and feel sad.” Wade interrupted. “So we got a new rug and now we can sit here at night and talk and kiss and hold each other, maybe you’ll go all soft and floaty for me and we’ll get some good memories right in this spot, alright?”

Oh.

“My Alpha, you’re so sweet.” Peter jumped up and kissed his Alpha soundly. “Thank you. I have an idea how we can start on all that right away.”

“Oh yeah?” Wade raised his eyebrows, hazel eyes sparking red in anticipation. Even with their new enough, nothing more than kisses had happened in a few days, and the Alpha was beyond ready for more. “What did you have in mind?”

The Omega held up a small tub of lotion in one hand and oh Wade’s heart rate tripled--

--and then Peter held up his notebook in his other hand and announced, “I have a million questions about you and your healing and your past!”

Cockblocked by curiosity. That’s a new one. Wade’s heart rate went back to normal, but his smile stayed fond. “Yeah alright sweetheart. What’s the lotion for, though?”

“You bought it for me for my hands in Haven.” Peter explained. “Aloe lotion for when they get chapped from twisting hay or dealing with the animals, and I thought it would feel good on your skin.

The Omega pressed gingerly at a scar at Wade’s forearm. “I can work on your shoulders and back and ask questions? I know you’re still sore and I’ve been known to give pretty great back rubs.”

“You want to ask me a bunch of questions while rubbing me down with lotion?” Wade asked faux suspiciously. “That seems counterproductive, Pete. You get your hands on me and my brain sorta stops working.”

Peter’s lavender scent spiced abruptly, just like it had the other day and the Omega made a visible, concentrated effort to move past the moment while Wade watched in both amusement and curiosity.

What was going on with his wacky mate? If Pete wanted a kiss or something, all he had to do was take one.

“You alright, Pete?”

“Fine.” Peter was nearly scarlet, but he still shook his head and motioned towards the rug. “Assume the position, Alpha. Face down, ass up.”

Wade was too busy laughing at the outrageous expression to think anymore about why Peter had scented so vividly interested out of the blue, and once he was on the rug with his mate rubbing the soothing lotion all over his skin, the Alpha put it from his mind and let himself melt beneath his Omega’s hands.

“Feel good, Pete.” he mumbled, and the Omega nipped lightly at his bonding spot, whispering, “Oh Alpha, you feel good too.”

Wade blew out a deep breath and closed his eyes, concentrated on the cool aloe cream ad the warmth of Peter’s fingers as they skated carefully over the newer scars, then kneaded more purposefully into the older ones, breaking up knots and working at tense lines.

The Alpha didn’t know the last time anyone had really touched him at all, much less touched him to help relax overworked muscles or to calm his always irritated skin. The act of service from his mate had the Alpha almost purring in delight, and the quiet approving kisses Peter left on his shoulders and each sore spot had him loopy, just about floating really.

It had been a long time since Wade had been taken care of.

“My mate?” Wade ha been quiet for a long time when Peter put his lips to the Alpha’s ear and hummed softly. “Where are you? With me?”

“I’m here, Pete.” Just barely. “You ready to ask some questions?”

“I don’t have to.” Wade’s scent was soaked with longing and something needy, cedar and licorice and the hint of sweetness ringed with contentment and the Omega loved every bit of it. “Just relax, my mate.”

“Ask me questions.” Wade tried to sound reassuring. “S’fine Pete. Go on, you know you want to.”

Peter did want to, but he kept his voice soft and hands comforting so his Alpha wouldn’t slip out of near euphoria, and asked, “Will you tell me about growing up? About your mutation?”

“Hmm.” the Alpha sighed, shifted, but nodded into the rug. “Sure baby boy, what do you want to know first?”

“Just start from the beginning.” A gentle kiss at a still fresh scar. “Please?”

{{Author’s Note: It’s Deadpool canon that Thomas Wilson was an abusive piece of shit. TW for brief mentions of domestic violence}}

“At the beginning.” Another nod, drowsy this time. “Alright. I uh-- I dunno when I was born exactly, but I was old enough that the neighbors called me the man of the house. I remember my Pa coming home from fightin’ the English for independence and life got real shitty, real quick after that. He stopped hittin’ redcoats and started hittin’ us instead. Dunno if he was a mutant but I’m pretty sure my Ma was mutant, or at least a bonafide angel.”

Peter’s hands stilled for a moment, eyes closing in quiet grief before asking, “Why do you say that?”

“Cos she made sure Pa never laid a hand on me.” Wade said flatly. “And the day she was gone, all that protection went away.”

“I-- I’m sorry, Alpha.”

“It was a fever.” Wade grimaced over a particularly sore spot and Peter gentled his touch. “Got me and Ma real bad, and when I finally woke up she was gone. I think that’s when my mutation kicked in, cos there was no way I should have survived. She was gone and everything got worse between me and Pa.”

“When did you know for sure your mutation had been triggered?”

“Right about the time I presented as an Alpha?” the Alpha hazarded a guess. “It was only a year or so after Ma passed. Pa said I was getting too cocky, swaggerin’ around the place like I was top Alpha so he decided to put me in my place and broke my arm in a few different places.”

“He what?”

“S’alright, my mate.” Wade rumbled comfortingly when the Omega whined in distress. “Bones were all healed before I made it out of the cabin, so I just kept right on walking. Figured if Pa couldn’t kill me, there wasn’t much out there that could and I was old enough to make my way in the world.”

“So what did you do after that?” Peter scooted down till he was sitting on Wade’s rear and could dig his fingers into the base of his Alpha’s back. “You were just a kid when you presented right? Fourteen, maybe fifteen?”

“That’s practically grown, Pete. Or at least old enough to hold a gun.” the Alpha grunted. “Funny thing about healing from everything is that you get real fearless, and being fearless leads right into a knack for killing whether from talent or sheer recklessness. I tried the militia, but found better money as a mercenary.”

“You--” Peter’s hands faltered again. “You killed people for money?”

“Every war needs soldiers, Pete.” Wade hadn’t thought about his time as a mercenary in years, and his scent soured in remembrance of all the blood he’d spilled.

“Every war needs soldiers.” he repeated. “And on this continent, there is always a war. I was good at it. The fight kept me away from home, away from the cabin and all the memories of Ma, kept me from wanting to settle down too quickly or giving in to how lonely I was all the time. Collected my paycheck and collected my scars and kept right on going.”

“You were lonely.”

“Every day.”

“Well, what convinced you to stop?”

“...Vanessa.” A picture of long dark hair and wickedly bright eyes flitted through the Alpha’s mind, delicately curved fangs and a growl to rival Wade’s own ringing as memory in his ears. “Vanessa convinced me to stop.”

**************

“I think I know Doctor Banner.” Peter paused in tossing hay into Arthur’s stall and leaned against the pitchfork to peer down at his Alpha on the barn floor. “He looks familiar for some reason.”

“I’m sure there’s lots of doctors with hilarious hair and big glasses, Pete.” Wade countered nonchalantly. “Think it’s a rule or something for them.”

“Thank you for that.” Peter scowled and kicked a tuft of hay down at his mate. “But I’m serious, I really think I know him. Or you know, not know him. But I think I read about him in one of my science classes before I switched degrees. He’s not from this time either, is he?”

“Nope.” Wade patted at the goat and sent her away, then scooped out some oats for Bea. “I don’t know when the Doc is from exactly but he’s been here since before the last big war. Cable brought him to Haven, introduced him around and Banner’s been here ever since. Long time, I guess.”

“What’s a long time to you?” Peter moved over to Bea’s stall to give her fresh hay. “Twenty years? Fifty? When you’re over a hundred years old, what’s a ‘long time’ for you?”

“Couldn’t tell you, sweetheart.” Wade confessed. “No real reason to keep track of time when nothing much changes, you know? Especially here. Most of us in Haven either age real slow or don’t age at all and since I live up here, winter sticks around for so long I can’t even measure a year by the seasons, not accurately anyway. I can go an entire winter without seeing anyone else, but how long is that? Five months? Eight months? I’ve got no idea.”

“Right.” Something sad tugged at Peter’s heart over his Alpha’s words. “Time is irrelevant when you live forever.”

“Sorry, Omega.” the Alpha apologized. “I’ve got no idea how long Doc has been around, but I bet Eddie could tell you though, bet he could tell you to the exact day.”

“Why’s that?”

“Eddie is the whole reason Doc is in Haven.” Wade trilled to Arthur, patting at the old war horse’s nose. “Cable brought Banner around to keep Eddie under control.”

“Under control.” The Omega echoed, with more than a twinge of uneasiness. “Why? Is that because of whatever is inside of Eddie? What happened?”

“Shit, Pete, that’s not a good story.” Wade finished in Arthur’s stall and coaxed the horse back inside onto the clean hay. “You don’t wanna ask questions about that one.”

“No?” Peter challenged. “I asked Clint if he used feathers for his nest. You think I don’t want to know about Eddie?”

{{Author’s Note: TW for mentions of kidnapping, implied assault, and Eddie/Venom canon typical violence}}

“Yeah, you did ask Clint about a nest.” Wade chuckled. “Alright um-- I guess it’s been long enough now it won’t hurt to talk about it. The shorter, less bloody story is that one day Eddie’s mate Anne went missing. Turns out she was snatched by a contingent of soldiers from the fort a few valleys over, and they took her back to the post.”

Peter set the pitchfork aside and furrowed his brow as he thought over everything he’d studied about this area before meeting Cable. “I didn’t know there was a fort up here.”

“There isn’t anymore.” The Alpha set his jaw, eyes flickering red with unease. “There used to be, but there isn’t anymore.”

“Shit.”

We told Eddie to stay behind in Haven and we’d go bring Annie home but he didn’t listen. Can’t blame the guy, no one would keep me from going to rescue my mate either but when Eddie saw what they’d done to Anne, he let that thing inside him out into the open and there--” Wade swallowed hard. “There was nothing we could do, Pete. We couldn’t stop him. We didn’t stand a chance.”

“So what did you do?” Peter whispered. “Afterwards.”

“We cleaned up.” he said flatly. “After that thing was finished and it was just Eddie again, we cleaned up. Burned anything left standing and buried anything that didn’t burn. It only took a few hours because he-- they-- had destroyed everything.”

“Eddie was broken after that.” the Alpha continued, softer now. “He was ruined. We used to fight and laugh and drink together, he was one of my friends, right along with Clint and Logan and after that he was just ruined. Tried to die a few times but whatever that thing is, kept it from happening, kept Eddie from getting some fuckin’ peace. Nobody should have to live after that, but that thing wouldn’t let him go.”

“What did you do? How did Bruce get here?”

“A mutant from Westchester came up to Haven.” Wade motioned for Peter to jump down from the loft, and caught his mate easily, handling Peter’s slight weight without even grimacing. “His name was Charles and he was a real powerful telepath. He put some sort of blanket effect over the area, ended up convincing everyone that there wasn’t a fort, that nothing had happened, that Eddie was fine. That sort of thing doesn’t work on me and Logan though, but who would we tell? Who would believe us?”

“Charles spent weeks holed up with Eddie putting blocks in his mind so he wouldn’t remember what happened to Anne and what he’d done afterwards and then Cable showed up with Doc Banner a while after that, and it’s just the way things are now.”

“So no one outside of Haven knows what happened?” Peter picked up the basket of eggs and followed his Alpha towards the door. “A fort and all the soldiers just disappeared and no one knows?”

“Eventually someone will come along who knows there’s supposed to be a fort up here.” Wade acknowledged. “But they won’t find anything.”

“And Eddie is stuck like this?” Peter thought back to the way Eddie had seemed only half coherent, how the thing inside him--them-- was so horrible. “Halfway between himself and a monster? He could barely put a sentence together when I met him.”

“He isn’t always that bad.” Wade said grimly. “Being half alive like this is better than how he was after Anne. Sometimes I think that thing is the worst thing to ever happen to Eddie, sometimes I know it’s the only thing saving my friend from tearing himself apart at the seams.”

“And Bruce?”

“Cable said that whatever Eddie has isn’t a match for whatever Doc has.” Wade grabbed the milk bucket and reached for his Omega’s hand, squeezing lightly. “They balance each other out, or maybe cancel each other out, I dunno. Apparently Doc knows a lot about losing out to monsters, but none of us have seen his mutation. He scents off like Eddie does, so maybe he’s got one of those things too. Maybe Cable brought him to Haven cos Doc handles it all better and can take care of Eddie. Whatever the reason is, he and Eddie trust each other. They keep each other safe, which means the rest of us are safe too.”

“That’s so sad.” Peter hunched close to Wade’s shoulder when they stepped back out into the cold. “I can’t imagine losing a mate to something so horrible, but to rage out like that? To need the evidence burned and for blocks to be put in people’s minds? That seems...” he shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”

“Oh I can.” Wade pushed Peter ahead into the cabin and shut the door behind them, prodding his mate towards the fire to get warm. “If someone tried to take my mate away from me, I’d unleash hell Pete.”

“Well sure you’d be upset but--”

“They used to call me Deadpool.” Wade’s eyes flickered bloody red in the firelight, fangs glinting when he snarled. “When I was a mercenary, they called me Deadpool. I carried a rifle and a pistol and two swords on my back. Wore red so no one would see me bleed and since I couldn’t die, all they ever knew was that I never stopped walking towards them. I got rid of all that after Vanessa but if anyone had tried to take her away from me, or if anyone ever hurt you like they hurt Anne, there wouldn’t be a corner of this fuckin’ world I wouldn’t cover in carnage.”

“Alpha.”

“I saw what Eddie did to those men” The words were nothing more than a growl. “And I’d do the same thing two times over. No one will ever hurt my mate. Ever.”

*************

“My mate?” Peter hadn’t said much since their talk the previous afternoon when Wade had announced so viciously what he would do if anyone tried to hurt his mate, but this morning the omega pushed aside his breakfast and reached for his mate’s hand. “You said time doesn’t mean anything to you.”

“Not really.” Wade lifted the Omega’s fingers to his mouth for a kiss. “Is that weird for you? You used to complain that you never knew what day it was when you wrote in your notebooks. Is it weird that I don’t mark that sort of thing?”

“How--” Peter worried at the inside of his cheek. “How long have I been here, Alpha? How long have you known me?”

“You’ve been here seventy six days.” Wade didn’t even hesitate to answer. “Seventy five since you woke up, but seventy three altogether. Why?”

“No reason.” Peter flushed in pleasure, lavender and honeysuckle rolling sweet with elation. “I was just curious.”

“Seventy six days.” Wade leaned over the table and kissed his mate for a long time. “Time matters for the important things, Pete. It matters for you. Every single day I get with you matters. I will always know exactly how long you’ve been mine.”

****************

“Tell me about Vanessa.” Peter stretched out on the bear skin rug and folded his hands behind his head, turning his head so he could see his Alpha whittling. “Your first mate. Was she a soldier?”

“Why do you want to hear about Vanessa, Pete?” Wade scraped the tip of his blade along the roly poly body of a soon to be bumble bee to create one of the signature stripes on the insect. “Why curious all the sudden?”

“I'm curious about everything” Peter reminded him. “I had my notebook and a million questions, remember?”

“I vividly remember the million questions.” The Alpha laughed quietly and nudged his foot out until it rested at his mate’s side. “Why Vanessa though?”

“Well you don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want.” Peter propped himself up on his elbow and breathed in deep to check the Alpha’s scent for any insecurity or anger. “But it doesn’t bother me.”

“It doesn’t bother you to talk about my first mate.”

“Does it bother you?” The Omega returned. “It doesn’t bother me, Alpha. Vanessa was a whole lifetime ago and I don’t doubt that you--” love me. “-- want me as yours. I’d like to know about her because she was important to you. She was part of you and I want to know that part of you too. I want to know everything about you, Alpha.”

“Oh yeah?” Wade focused on carving another stripe on the bee so it wasn’t quite as obvious how affected he was by the simple sentence.

I want to know everything about you, Alpha.

Sometimes Wade forgot about little moments like these, moments where mates learned to know each other. So often a bond was complete before the knowing even began, the physical mating rushed through to soothe the itch beneath their skin and then in the years that followed, a pair would have to learn and grow and find all the ways they completed each other.

But it was different with Peter, some would say backwards even. He and Wade spent hours just talking, mornings cooking together and afternoons figuring out how to make the other laugh, evenings mapping each others bodies above and under clothes. There was no silver bite at Peter’s throat but Wade thought he knew the Omega completely without it, and though their kisses were heated, the Alpha still reveled in the freedom to count Peter’s freckles and to understand the different smiles and to recognize every single dip and lift of his mate’s scent.

Little moments like these were when mates became one in all the beautiful ways, and Wade had forgotten just how amazing the little moments could be.

“Alpha?” Peter sat up and wrapped his hand around Wade's ankle, squeezing lightly. “Where’d you go? If you don’t want to talk about her, it’s alright, I just thought--”

“She would have liked you.” Wade kept his eyes trained on the bumble bee taking shape on the toy. “Vanessa’s life had made her hard, harder than other Alpha’s because she was female and she was gorgeous and somehow that means she had to be twice as tough as anyone. But she would have liked you, would have been soft with you like she was soft with me.”

“Oh.” The Omega scrunched his nose in open delight. “You think so?”

“I know so.” Wade put the toy down only long enough to pull Peter up to his lap, then went back to carving. “Vanessa wasn’t a soldier, I paid for her company the first night we met. I was coming off a job and she was working in the bar and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I offered her every bit of money in my pocket to spend the night with me, she told me I could have an hour, I argued that we’d just be getting started in an hour and Vanessa--”

The Alpha chuckled. “Vanessa laughed until she fell off the bar stool at the idea that anyone could make it an hour in bed with her. She told me I’d either be up and done and deflating before she finished undressing, or I’d be begging for mercy before the half hour mark.”

“Wait.” Peter laughed at his mate. “Wait. You promised her an hour of good times, and she said you were either a quick draw or a quitter?”

“Yep. That’s right.”

“And you still wanted to sleep with her?!”

“Oh it gets better.” Wade tucked the Omega tighter to his chest. “My healing factor means I can be ready over and over all night long--”

“What?! I didn’t know about that!”

“--well, you were due to find out eventually. Anyway, when Vanessa didn’t wear me out in that first half hour, she took it as a challenge and we ended up spending the night together.”

“So what.” Peter was still stuck on the whole all night long thing. “You guys had marathon sex and when no one won, you just fell asleep? Then what happened?”

“I rolled out of bed in the morning and tried to get dressed.” Wade turned the toy over and started on the other side. “Vanessa laughed at me and told me I was stupid if I thought I was walking away now. We mated right then and there, packed her stuff and walked out the door together.”

“You knew that fast? That she was meant to be yours?”

“That fast.” The Alpha confirmed. “She stopped working the cat house, I stopped the mercenary work, we built a cabin and lived our life. She was fierce and funny and if I hadn’t loved her so much, I’d be insecure that she was a scarier Alpha than me. Everything was a contest and she almost always won.”

Peter muffled a laugh over the idea of a pretty female being scarier than his mate. “Are you serious?”

“To be fair, she cheated.” Wade countered. “Anytime she’d thought she would lose anything, she’d just take her top off. Have you ever seen a woman shoot a gun topless, Pete? I didn’t stand a chance.”

“That sounds very unfair.” Peter laughed up at him again. “Poor Alpha.”

“Yeah well, I’d never been happier to lose a contest in my life.” Wade’s scent dulled towards melancholy, and the Omega on his lap went very still. “Vanessa got sick one year and never quite shook it. I’d gone so long healing from everything, and she was so fearless that I forgot the people I loved could even get hurt. But she got sick and I lost her, and after I lost her, I lost myself.”

“You went back to war.”

“I went back to killing.” The Alpha corrected. “Picked up my swords again and went back to killing and that’s just what I did until Logan found me. He dragged me up here to Haven, helped me build the cabin and I’ve been here ever since.”

“Did you have any children?” Peter smoothed careful fingers over the toy, his heart clenching thinking of his Alpha carving gifts for his and Vanessa’s children, rambunctious boys and smart mouthed little girls who would be delighted to have their Papa make trinkets to play with. “Or-- or try for children?”

“No.” Wade’s steady carving faltered for a second. “No children. My mutation means I hover somewhere between living and dead and that’s not the sort of biology that allows for kids. We were happy just the two of us, and after she passed, I think maybe I was relieved to not have a couple brats running around. I lost myself after Vanessa, and kiddos would have suffered for it and that just isn’t right. S’what my Pa did to me and the lifestyle’s gotta end sometime, right? Ending terrible cycles?”

“Right.” The Omega twined his fingers over Wade’s and pressed comfortingly at him. “But it makes me sad that you’ve been alone all this time.”

“I’m not alone anymore.” Wade leaned his cheek into Peter’s hair and closed his eyes. “You want kids, Pete?”

“I never imagined I’d have any.” Peter answered honestly. “But I never imagined I’d want a mate either so…”

He let the sentence trail off, and Wade nodded against his temple, gathered his courage and asked softly, “Well, can you settle for just a mate? Just-- just this? Just me and you?”

“Alpha my Alpha.” Peter took the toy and knife from his mate, then wriggled sideways on Wade’s lap and drew gentle fingers over the Alpha’s brow, down his cheek to rest at Wade’s mouth. “What makes you think I’m settling?”

***************

Something was going on with Peter.

The Omega was fidgety in bed, restless and unable to stay asleep for more than an hour at a time. Sometimes he glommed on to Wade's body and other times Peter acted as if he didn't want to touch the Alpha at all.

Peter talked a lot, which wasn’t really anything was nothing new, but now it seemed like he was chatting just to fill the silence, words forming rapid fire from the Omega every time Wade paused in conversation, Peter’s voice almost too loud in moments that deserved quiet.

Wade caught Peter staring at off moments, biting at his lip and clenching his fist while his scent swelled hot and other times, the Omega snapped his head around to look at the wall when Wade undressed. Lingering kisses were cut off abruptly, perfunctory passing kisses made the Omega whine and Wade was confused.

He was just outright confused.

At first the Alpha thought Peter was still working through some lingering angst from The Incident, but as the days went on, Wade had to think his mate was being more affected by their often serious talks than Peter wanted to admit.

And that-- that was understandable. Sure it had been almost therapeutic for Wade to open up about his past and tell those stories without fear of judgment or disgust from his beautiful mate, but it couldn’t be easy for Peter to hear about how awful Thomas Wilson had been to Wade growing up. It was most likely uncomfortable to talk about dangerous mutants like Eddie and the blood soaked ground they had left behind, and despite Peter’s quiet reassurance, it had to be unsettling or maybe even upsetting to spend hours talking about Vanessa.

Peter struggling with all of that was understandable, so Wade tried to give his mate space to work through the conflicting feelings and tried to just be patient until Peter was ready to talk.

But after several days with no change in sight, the Alpha gave up trying to tip toe through the conflicting signals and confronted Peter about it over lunch.

“My mate.” He waited until Peter looked up from his sandwich. “What is going on with you?”

“Nothing.” Peter said quickly, too quickly. “Nothing’s wrong, Alpha. Why? What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing.” Wade folded his arms and squinted at his Omega. “But something is going on with you. You’re clingy and then not clingy, you’ve been wanting to talk about all sorta things and say it doesn’t bother you then you can’t talk to me after. Some days you look at me like you wanna tear my clothes off, but then you pull away from kisses like I’ve burned you or something. What’s going on?”

“Wade--”

“I can’t read your mind, Pete.” the Alpha interrupted bluntly. “And I know after the lion you had a real hard time so I was being patient, but this is enough. Tell me what’s wrong and what I can do to fix it so I can stop worrying.”

“No really, nothing’s wrong, I just--” Lavender and honeysuckle twisted anxious and Wade automatically rumbled low in an attempt to calm his mate. “I just um--”

“Talk to me, sweetheart.”

“Holy shit, I’m so bad at this.” Peter dug his fingers into his hair and groaned out loud. “I’m sorry Alpha, I didn’t mean to stress you out. I’m so bad at this.”

“So bad at what, Pete?”

“At this!” The Omega burst out. “At being sexy with you!”

“...being sexy with me.” It was only the anxious rapidly turning to frustration in his mate’s scent that kept Wade from laughing. “This is-- you are--” he cleared his throat to quiet a burble of incredulous laughter and tried again. “What do you mean, trying to be sexy? Can you explain that?”

“I have never needed an Alpha outside the last possible moment of my heat.” Peter explained to the top of the table, too embarrassed to meet his Alpha’s gaze. “Never even wanted an Alpha really. So I have no idea how to--” the Omega made a broad gesture that meant exactly nothing. “-- you know?”

“Um--” the Alpha pursed his lips. “Nope. Gonna need more than that.”

“We’ve been talking about some really serious things lately.” Peter pointed out. “And it’s been really great to connect with you like that. I already felt like I knew you, but now I feel like I really know you and it's incredible.”

“It's been good for me too, Omega. But if it’s starting to stress you out--”

“Not stressing me out.” Peter denied. “Sort of the opposite actually.”

Wade waited with raised eyebrows and after another minute the Omega admitted, “We sorta crossed a big line a few days ago, Wade. A big one. But we’ve been so busy talking that we haven’t um-- revisited?-- that line and I don’t know-- I mean, is there a nice way to ask you to pin me down and get me off, or….?”

The Alpha didn’t mean for his eyes to about pop from his head, neither did he mean for his jaw to practically dislocate when his mouth dropped open, and he certainly didn’t mean to shout “What?!” out loud but honestly, out of all the ways he’d thought this conversation would go, his Omega wanting to know if there was a nice way to ask for an orgasm hadn’t made the list.

“Is there a nice way to what?!”

“Never mind, I shouldn’t have said anything. This is so stupid.” There were real tears in Peter’s eyes as he got to his feet with a huff and stomped away, slamming the door behind him as he went. “Leave it alone, Alpha!”

Wade left it alone for all of five minutes, then went to find his mate and try for a real conversation again, not willing to let it go when Peter was so weirdly upset by it, and certainly not willing to let it go when the talk could end with his Omega naked.

He found the Omega in the barn brushing Arthur, and he leaned against the stall door to watch for several minutes before finally asking, “Pete. Are you telling me you’ve been weird lately cos you’re horny?”

Peter grit his teeth, worked studiously at a spot in Arthur’s coat and muttered, “I’m not good at this, Alpha. We are mates and that makes the emotional stuff all okay. I know in my heart and my soul that we’re supposed to be together so whatever I’m feeling is fine, and usually I’m okay with saying it to you too but...”

Wade swooped in and smacked a kiss on his mates cheek, and Peter blinked at him in confusion.

“Keep talking.” The Alpha went back to leaning on the stall door. “I just love when you say things like that, about us being mates and meant to be. Keep talking.”

“Oh.” Peter’s smile was a little shy, and he continued in a softer tone, “I feel like I’ve told you this before, but I’ve never had a serious relationship. I’ve never even hooked up with people outside of heat. I used to get made fun of for it, called Pete the Virgin or Pete the Prude or about a thousand other things from people who thought sex was the most important thing in the world. Everyone I knew was hooking up in high school and college outside of heat, and I never did. I never did. I never wanted to and I had too much going on to waste time on relationships I knew weren’t going anywhere.”

“Keep talking.” Wade said again and the Omega sighed, shoulders hunching self consciously. “I’ve never had an Alpha outside of heat. I don’t even know what to do with one. I don’t know how to act--” another one of those broad gestures. “-- or you know--” yet another gesture that meant absolutely nothing. “Right? I don’t know how to do that. How to kiss you and-- and all that.”

“You’ve never been shy about kissing me.” Wade disagreed, latching on to the one part of Peter’s less than stellar explanation he understood. “You almost ate my face this morning, remember?”

“I did almost eat your face.” Peter conceded and the Alpha flashed his fangs in a teasing, encouraging smile. “And when kissing was enough for us then it was fine but now our enough is different, isn’t it? We aren’t just kissing anymore.”

“We aren’t just kissing anymore.” Wade agreed slowly, still trying and failing to figure out where Peter was going with it all. “Is that a problem?”

“It's only a problem because I’m making myself anxious about it.” Peter switched to working at Arthur’s mane so he wouldn’t have to look at his mate. “That’s why I’ve been weird. It’s like I’ve built this moment up in my head so much and now I don’t know how to just start it. Trying for a second time didn’t seem like a big deal after we were in bed that one night, but then we spent so much time talking about serious things and I started worrying about timing, because It's unsexy to talk about what happened to Eddie or Bruce or with your Pa.”

“...unsexy…?”

“And it's definitely weird to bring it up after we’ve sat and talked about your other mate? That’s not the right time. Then I thought about just creating a mood, but I don’t know how to do that. No experience with how to create a mood or what to say to create the mood. And then, what would I do if you didn’t want to do anything because I’d ruined the mood with all my questions and --”

“Pete.” Wade finally held up his hand to stop the rambling. “What are you talking about? What moment? What mood?”

“Okay, um.” Peter rubbed at the back of his neck and blushed bright red. “Alpha, I dunno how to take the conversation from how many eggs the chickens are laying, to asking if you’d like to eat me out till I come on your face. I feel like there’s no tactful way to do that, especially in light of everything we’ve been talking about. But that’s exactly what I want, and since I can’t seem to figure out the most reasonable time to bring it up, you can see why I’ve been awkward, right?”

“...right, Alpha?” he repeated when Wade didn’t answer. “You understand?”

Arthur startled in his stall when the Alpha practically roared with laughter, and when Peter scowled angrily, Wade only laughed louder, clutching at his side and full on guffawing at his mates ridiculousness.

“You know what?” The brush bounced off Wade’s head when Peter winged it at the obnoxious Alpha. “Comment withdrawn. Opportunity lost. Leave me alone, I have chores to do.”

Wade was still cackling something about “tactful” and “middle of the day” when Peter stalked back to the cabin, and the Omega briefly considered barring the door and making his mate sleep outside for the night.

“Idiot Alpha.” He muttered. “I’ll get myself off. Who needs him?”

************

Peter was still embarrassed a full hour later when Wade finished some work on the barn and came to knock at the cabin door, calling through the thick wood-- “My Omega. Let me in so we can talk.”

“The door’s unlocked.” Peter turned his back on the door and tucked further into bed. “And it’s your cabin, you don’t have to ask to come in.”

“Yeah, I know.” the Alpha slipped inside and shut the door gently. “But I thought I’d give you the option of kicking me out if that’s what you wanted.”

Silence from the Omega shaped lump beneath the blankets, and Wade went to get one of the chairs from the fireplace, dragging it over to the bedside.

“I shouldn’t have laughed at you.” he started first. “But you sorta caught me off guard with all that. I was really worrying that you were still having a hard time with me dying and I was trying to figure out how to fix it. I really wasn’t expectin’ you to say you were horny.”

“I didn’t say I was horny.” the blankets said crossly. “I said I was--”

“Anxious.” The Alpha cut in. “Right. Which is worse cos I hate that you’d be anxious about anything with us, sweetheart. Whether you’ve done this before with another Alpha or not, this is me Pete. It’s us. The first day we met, you asked to see my butt. You initiated our first kiss. I guess I don’t understand why it’s suddenly so hard for you to be with me.”

“It’s not hard to be with you.” Peter popped up in a split second, hair hilariously askew but eyes shining bright and earnest. “It’s not hard to be with you, Alpha.”

“Then why--”

“It’s me.” the Omega interrupted. “It’s me. I’ve never done this. Heat sex doesn’t count for anything cos it’s all biology and instinct at that point but this right here? Outside of heat? I don’t know how to do it. And I want you, Alpha I want you like I am in heat. That’s what it feels like. I can’t deal with wanting you like I’m in heat. It’s just--”

Peter's nose flared when Wade’s scent jolted with arousal, the Alpha’s eyes flickering red. “Oh holy shit, what was that?”

“You used the sentence wanting you like I’m in heat.” Wade rumbled. “Did’ja think I could sit still through that?”

“... you want me like I want you.” Peter muttered, and Wade didn’t bother answering. Of course he wanted Peter, they needed each other and that had been proven over and over in the last few months. “But you’ve had a mate before so you know how to do this. How to deal with needing each other and still going about a normal day. I’m having a hard time dealing with it. Can’t seem to find the right time to ask you to take me back to bed, and even if I found the right time between chores and all the damn questions I’ve been asking, I don’t have the right words to ask. I’ve never had to find words to get from this particular point A to that particular point B.”

Wade rubbed his hands together slowly, thinking his answer through before deciding on, “Is that point A for ass and point B for butt?”

“Oh my god, Wade.” Peter went to dive back down beneath the covers but the Alpha reached out and snagged him before he could disappear, and Peter couldn’t do much more than squawk in indignation as he was pulled gently but steadily from under the blankets and right off the bed onto his mate’s lap.

“First of all.” Wade wrestled Peter around until the Omega was straddling his lap, Peter’s knees wedged onto either side of the Alpha’s waist. “First of all, just because I’ve had a mate before doesn’t mean this is easy or familiar or that I know what the hell I’m doing, alright? The only thing familiar about having a mate again is how fuckin’ happy I am, but even that’s different. Everything about you and I is different from Vanessa and I and I would never compare you. Not ever. Do you understand?”

“I--” Peter hadn’t meant to imply Wade compared he and Vanessa, but the reassurance calmed something in him all the same. “I understand.”

“Second of all.” Wade swept his hands up Peter’s back to tangle in his bed rumpled hair. “You want me, baby boy? Tell me. Use your words, or use your hands, or get your scent all sweet and addicting and bat your eyelashes at me. Leave me a note, drag me away from chores, I don’t care. Just look at me. Look at me and smile and I-- I’m gone. I’m yours, Omega. Nothing to it. Any time of day or night.”

“But what if--”

“Any time of day or night.” the Alpha repeated. “I’ve got a hundred years of patience on you Pete, that’s the only reason I’m not all over you all the time. We’ve been talking a lot, you have questions and nothing’s worse than having conversation pushed away cos someone’s tryna get naked, right?”

“I guess.” Peter pushed his nose into Wade’s throat and inhaled shakily. “I’m sorry I’ve been so crazy. I should have just talked to you.”

“Maybe. But then again, should I maybe apologize for trying to give you space to figure it out?” Wade settled one hand at the base of Peter’s neck and palmed low over the Omega’s rear with the other. “Did I do the right thing giving you a few days or should I have thrown you in bed the first time you looked like you wanted to take a bite out of me?”

“Wade.” Peter finally smiled. “You’re ridiculous.”

“To be fair, you just had a meltdown cos you want me to get you off, my mate. Which one of us is more ridiculous right now?”

“To be fair.” he threw the Alpha’s words right back at him. “It was more of a meltdown cos I don’t know how to suggest that sort of thing, not for-- not for the other reason.”

“Is it really that big of a deal, Pete?” Wade coaxed his Omega’s head to the side and nipped at the soft skin just behind Peter’s ear. “To not have had an Alpha outside heat?”

“The older I got, the more it seemed like a big deal.” Peter confessed quietly. “It felt like this big thing I’d have to admit to on a date and then maybe the Alpha wouldn’t want to bother with someone inexperienced or worse they’d take it as a challenge and I don’t-- I don’t want to feel like a conquest, like a notch on some Alpha’s belt. And I never even really wanted to try. I always felt like I’d need to be in love before I wanted an Alpha and I never met anyone I thought would be willing to wait.”

“So the other night when we were together--”

“My first.” the Omega confirmed. “My first outside of heat and even then, heat isn’t--”

“--intimate.” Wade finished and Peter nodded, grateful that his Alpha finally understood. “Heat isn’t intimate, it’s just bodies. Just parts fitting into other parts where neither person is coherent enough to really care what happens. You needed more than that before you were ready to be with anyone, so you’re...shy ... about bringing it up with me. You think your inexperience is something to worry about.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Do I seem real worried, Pete?”

“No.” The Omega tugged at Wade’s shirt and lifted it free, slipping his hands beneath to press at the Alpha’s abdomen, smiling to himself when Wade sighed and relaxed beneath the touch. “No you don’t. Thank you.”

They sat in comfortable quiet for a moment, then Peter whispered, “Was there a third point? First of all, you don’t compare me and Vanessa, second of all, if I want you I just need to tell you. Was there a third?”

“Third.” the Alpha tightened his grip at Peter’s narrow hips, then with one quick movement, threw the Omega back onto the bed and lunged forward to cover Peter’s surprised screech with a messy kiss. “Third, I think it’s fuckin’ beautiful that you kept waiting for someone but you didn’t think you had to wait with me. I love that, Pete. I love that you know we are right, and meant to be and that means you worry about being too horny, instead of worrying about not being horny enough like you did with other people.”

“I hate how you describe that.” Peter decided, but their next kiss was packed full of adoration. “But I love that you said it. Thank you.”

“That was my third point.” Wade sucked at Peter’s tongue when it ventured into his mouth. “And here’s my fourth.”

“Oh my god, there’s a fourth?”

“Fourth point-- I should be suffocating between your thighs right now, don’t you think?!”

“Wade!” Peter screamed in laughter when Wade started yanking at his pants. “Alpha, oh my god!”

“Use your words, Pete!” Wade goaded, stripping the trousers right off and tossing them over his shoulder and getting to work on Peter’s underwear as well. “Let’s hear you ask me to eat you out!”

“ALPHA!” The Omega could have died of mortification, but the feeling was abruptly squashed in favor of a startled moan when Wade shoved his knees open and buried his face right into the vee of Peter’s hip. “Ohhh-oh oh oh Alpha--”

“Smell good, Pete.” Wade’s growl was low and filthy, the teasing and laughter erased once he got up close to his mate. “Fuck, you smell good.”

“Wade.” Peter’s back arched at the first warm swipe of Wade’s tongue over his cock, and he could have sobbed when the pressure was only fleeting, there and gone again. “Wade, please.”

“Please what?” Another light lick, this time further down over nearly hairless skin and still too far from where Peter needed him to be. “Use your words, Omega.”

“Please, I--” Need you. Want you. I’m empty. “--Wade please--”

“Pete.” A rumble and only the barest pressure at the Omega’s rim. “Tell me what you want.”

“There aren’t any words.” Peter choked out and the Alpha paused to listen. ‘There aren’t any words, my Alpha. This is more than-- than whatever I can say or-- or ask for. I just need you, I need you, I need--”

“I’ve got you.” A kiss at his navel so tender it brought tears to Peter’s eyes. “My mate. I need you too.”

***************

Afterwards, when Peter was still gasping for air, still shivering and trying to clench his knees together to keep from spilling more slick onto the bed, he managed a shaky, “Will it always be like this? Will you always be able to take me apart so easily? Is it cos I’m practically pure or--”

“It’s cos you’re mine.” Wade didn’t lift his head from Peter’s stomach, closing his eyes and breathing in time to the rise and fall of the Omega’s breath. “How we are together? It’s cos you’re mine, baby boy. We’re mates. You’re made to need me and I’m made to be hopelessly addicted drunk on the way you taste.”

The Alpha licked at the wet still on his lips, and Peter keened helplessly when Wade’s big hands squeezed tighter at his waist. “You taste so good, my mate.”

“Would you like me to um--” Peter hesitated, shy again. “I’ve never gone down on anyone and I feel like you’re probably too big to fit in my mouth but I’d love to try for you.”

“Some other time, baby boy.” Wade eased off the Omega and rolled onto his back, tugging at the front of his pants meaningfully. “Been there, done that, need to do laundry.”

“You already…?” Peter propped up on his elbow and glanced down, then up at his Alpha in shock. “Really? Just from listening to me?”

“From feelin’ you come on my tongue and my fingers.” the Alpha corrected, and Peter blushed prettily. “Hearing you scream my name. Tastin’ how sweet you get gushing like that. Getting to hold you up against my mouth and have those long legs around my neck. I was only teasing about you suffocating me between your thighs, you know. I guess its a good thing I can hold my breath so long.”

“Wade!”

“Gorgeous.” Wade pushed the Omega’s hands away when Peter tried to hide and leaned in to bump their noses together. “Can I kiss you?”

“Of course, why would you even ask?” Peter murmured and pressed their mouths together, whimpering when his mate immediately bit at his lip, and then sighing into the soothing lick Wade gave afterwards. “Alpha if you want to bite me--”

“I want to eat you whole.” Wade groaned and the Omega laughed softly into their next kiss. “But more than that, I want to hold you so let me get cleaned up first.”

“Okay, my mate.” Peter fell back onto the blankets, naked and unabashed, one knee bent and the other leg stretched out, arms above his head and entire body on full display. He wasn’t floating but he sure felt like flying, his entire being humming with lingering sparks from his Alpha’s fingers and tongue.

Peter almost wanted to laugh at how anxious he’d been just that morning, tongue tied and awkward and unable to tell his Alpha what he wanted. He knew-- he knew a bond was more than just sex, but the Omega also knew that the soul deep, core shaking need to be together was central to preserving a bond. Physical touch, physical affection, even just platonic skin to skin contact was essential for mates to remain settled and centered and beautifully, almost spiritually, in tune with one another.

Sex wasn't necessary, but physical affection was and Peter was nearly euphoric over the combination of a shattering orgasm and the knowledge that his mate had been the one to bring such pleasure.

My mate.

The Omega was suddenly grateful he’d never been one to hook up, to chase casual interactions. Why would he possibly want empty moments with strangers when he could feel like this?

“My mate.” The bed dipped when Wade came back, and Peter hummed happily when the Alpha’s rough hands skated over his bare skin and their lips met in another lingering kiss. “You smell perfect right now.”

“Mmmm, hows that?” Peter rolled onto his side and tucked into Wade’s arms, snuggling into his chest. “What do I smell like?”

“Like us.” Wade’s voice dropped and the inflection made Peter shudder. “Like me and like you, like you’re about as happy as you’ve ever been. What are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking…” the Omega licked at a drop of sweat on his mate’s collarbone and wound their legs together. “I’m thinking I’ll never get over how good your skin feels against mine. I love being naked with you.”

The Alpha’s scent bumped with joy and Peter budged closer. “And I’m thinking I’m suddenly glad I never hooked up with anyone else. It used to be embarrassing that I’d never experienced anything other than a last minute knot in the worst part of my heat but now I-- I sort of love it. You’re the first Alpha to ever know me like this.” Wade growled and Peter huffed a quiet laugh. “What, you’re gonna be possessive over me now that you know you’re my first?”

“I'd be possessive over you even if I was your one hundredth Alpha.” Wade countered. “Numbers don’t matter, my mate. I only care that you’re with me now.”

“Numbers don’t matter?” Peter scraped his teeth along Wade’s throat and predictably, the Alpha’s cock twitched against his stomach. “That sounds like something someone would say if they’ve had hundreds of partners.”

“Outside of a rut, I’ve only been with two people, Pete.”

“But you’ve been around over a hundred years.”

“Yep.” The Alpha nodded. “And other than the occasional rut before Vanessa, I never needed to be with anyone that wasn’t my mate, anyone I didn’t love. After Vanessa I wasn’t with anyone even in a rut. You are my mate, the first person I’ve wanted since losing Vanessa, which brings my grand total of real partners up to two with you being the first in...sixty years. Try not to be intimidated by my vast years of prowess and experience, hm?”

“I’ll try.” Peter said solemnly, and Wade laughed, gave him another quick kiss.

The conversation shifted to something more mundane, but Peter’s mind was stuck in a cycle, repeating Wade’s words over and over in his head.

I never needed to be with anyone that wasn’t my mate, anyone I didn’t love.

Oh, he loves me.

Oh my god, I love him too.

**************

The next morning Peter popped out of bed with a smile on his face, sated from spending the night with his Alpha, thrilled with how their talk had gone yesterday afternoon. The entire week had been full of surprising revelations and heart rending truths, small moments of beautiful intimacy and larger instances of trust and oh yes impossible pleasure that Peter knew-- he knew still wasn’t as intense as being fully mated.

But after Wade had inadvertently admitted to loving Peter, the Omega was ready to put into action a plan that had been forming all week long, a plan that included courting his Alpha much the same way Wade tried to court him-- with gentle touches and unfailing understanding and small gestures throughout their day that showed love, whether it was taking over a chore so Wade wouldn’t have to do it, or working at the Alpha’s shoulders while he whittled at night, and -- if Peter could work up the courage-- gifting his mate with the same sort of attention Wade had given him yesterday.

Courting, because his Alpha deserved to be spoiled too and Peter was determined to give it a try.

I’m here for you. I want you. My mate.

“You look like you’re busy thinking already.” Wade teased from over the rim of his cup. “What could possibly be on your mind before you’ve had your coffee?”

“I was thinking I’d feed the animals today so you could--” Peter stopped in his tracks when he saw a new notebook on the table, and a handful of sharpened pencils. “What’s that?”

“No no, finish your thought.” the Alpha protested. “Are you going to do my chores today so I have the energy necessary to get you screaming again? Have I been regulated to an Alpha of carnal delights only?”

“Wade.”

“I humbly accept the position. I’ll require three meals a day and a lack of clothing allowance.”

“Oh my god.” Peter tossed one of the pencils at his mate in exasperation. “Seriously, what is this?”

“Did you think I only bought you one notebook in town?” the Alpha nodded towards the new one. “Feel like that would’ve been foolish on my part, right? Especially since you’re already writing along th’edges with your old one. And I know you got at least a dozen pens in your pack, but I thought a few pencils wouldn’t hurt.”

“Thank you.” Peter thought he could cry as he picked up the new notebook. Who knew such simple gifts could mean so much. “I um-- I didn’t--” he shook his head. “Thank you, my mate.”

“Anything for you, baby boy.” Wade leaned over the table to give him a kiss. “Ready for coffee?”

“Yes please.” Peter sat down and picked up one of the sharpened pencils, turning it over in his hand a few times before opening the notebook to the first blank page and starting to write. “I filled the other one up with everything we talked about the last few days. Eddie and Vanessa and your Pa. All of that.”

“It’s your notebook, Pete. Fill it up with whatever you want.”

“Well maybe I’ll stop writing about all that stuff and just start writing about us.” Peter commented, and when Wade looked up in interest, he added slyly, “Turning an Alpha into the sort of drooling mess that comes in his pants is definitely an event for the history books, don’t you think?”

“Nah.” the Alpha disagreed with a snort. “It’s no surprise to anyone that I couldn’t resist you making those sort of noises and begging real pretty for me. No Alpha in the world could resist that, least of all your mate. Don’t get cocky, Pete. Making me spill in my pants iss definitely not a superpower.”

“Oh, I think it very well is.” Peter flung back. “Whether I use these powers for good or for evil is the real question!”

“Mouthy mate.” Wade muttered, and Peter retorted, “Slutty Alpha!”

“Slutty Alpha!?” Wade thunked the coffee down on the table and snatched Peter right off the seat, throwing the Omega over his shoulder and heading for the bed. “Slutty Alpha says the one who about soaked through his pants just thinking about what my tongue can do!”

Peter laughed and laughed and laughed when Wade wrestled him into the blankets, when only recently acquired clothes were torn right back off. He’d been so worried yesterday about broaching the topic of more and again with his mate but this morning it was the easiest thing in the world, the most right thing in the world and Peter delighted in every reassurance from the Alpha that Wade wanted and needed just as badly as he did.

The coffee on the table grew cold long before the bonded pair had finished, and the notebook lay open and forgotten on that first page.

And if Wade could read the Omega’s chicken scratch penmanship, the short entry would have would have ensured he didn’t let his mate leave the bed for days.

I never thought I wanted a bond but now I know I’m ready.

I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love my Alpha.

***************

SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE CHAPTER!

****************

@ships-galore @ceealaina @izziebladez @cwar1864 @hausoffro @lookuplaughing @tonystarkisanangel @multishippinglife @girlnic @iam93percentstardust @water-colouredmemories @paranormalmoonlight5 @igotloki @moosette05 @wayward-student-philosopher @kaz-brekkers-gloves @atomicfandombomb @desitonystark @ricecakeandhoney @ardatlily @fawnandgays @bluedreamdino @bibbarnes @blackstar1602 @hi-inevitable-im-deadpool @scientifically-lesbian-jesus @the-pagely-gun-slinger @oshuncheyenne @the-dragonwolf-den @pumpkin-spidey @sozvuchiy @cappunico @tired-dragons01 @chiby-chan @ahumoki0 @kanizsacollage @tulipsnbigcats @hiddenaurora @notchronicle24 @marvels-gurl @iridescent-idiot @badndbourgeoisie

#ncts personal #spideypool #peter parker #wade wilson #abo dynamics #demisexual peter #alpha wade wilson #omega peter parker #time travel au #soulmate au

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flightfoot · 4 years

Note

What's your favorite Rick Riordan series between Percy Jackson, The Kane Chronicles, Heroes of Olympus, Magnus Chase and Trials of Apollo? (or like, if you can't choose, what do you like about the series you've read?)

Trials of Apollo, no contest.

I liked Percy Jackson a lot, it was VERY well done. Percy was hilarious and relatable, but also just super awesome, his dynamic with Annabeth was fun to read, along with his dynamic with Grover, the quests had a lot of entertaining encounters, and it had some well-executed themes that tied in with the overall conflict nicely, mostly about how parents’ and adults’ negligence and even abuse can harm their kids, the overall effects of that, and just... generally trying to get the parents to shape up, as well as the effects of not respecting others in general, like with how the minor gods and by extension, their children, are treated by the Olympians. It comes up with Percy’s relationships with both Gabe and Poseidon, and most of the campers’ relationships with their godly parents, and that’s a MAJOR cause behind the entire conflict, and one of the major things that Percy tries to make better at the end of the last book.

Kane Chronicles... it’s been awhile since I read it. I don’t remember it having as prevalent a theme as Percy Jackson did, though there was definitely social commentary on racism, with how Carter was sometimes treated, and with how people had trouble comprehending that Carter and Sadie were full siblings, since while both are mixed, Carter’s pretty dark-skinned, while Sadie looks White. It was more of a background thing though, not a major plot point. I liked the characters and the plot fine, they were entertaining, and it was good overall - but it’s not a series I’ve felt a pressing need to reread either. Only real complaint I have about it is the romances centering around Sadie. Her and Anubis were kinda cute, but it would’ve been a lot cuter if she was older than 12-13, and he wasn’t a 4000-year-old god who looked, acted, and was treated as a 16-year-old. And then the whole thing with making it a love triangle with Walt who’s ALSO 16 and Rick’s method of “solving” the love triangle... look honestly I just would’ve been a lot more ok with the romantic shenanigans there if Sadie wasn’t a middle-schooler throughout it. Overall still good though, I’d be down for an adaptation of it, but it’s one of the few cases where I hope something IS flat-out changed to make the romances more palatable.

Heroes of Olympus is where I originally fell off of the Riordanverse. There was just so long between books and I could barely remember what happened between them, and with most of the books being like parts of the same quest (especially books 3, 4, and 5), unless you were constantly refreshing your memory of them via fandom, they were hard to follow, especially with several main characters and different character dynamics to keep track of. When I went back and read the whole set of them though, getting back into the series, it was WAY better, since I could read them as a coherent whole. I could tell he was struggling to juggle all the characters, but I thought he did a fairly decent job of it for what it was. I ended up liking all the characters - ESPECIALLY Leo, I thought he was great and relatable and funny, but I also wanted to hug him - and while the quest could drag on a bit at times, there were some interesting parts there. And Percy and Annabeth’s journey through Tartarus was GREAT.

The themes for Heroes Of Olympus overall were pretty much the same as with Percy Jackson, but with less emphasis I think. It was mostly just “the gods (mostly Zeus, really) are being crappy again, but this time we have enough support among ourselves to manage, except for when a god is technically required to defeat a Giant”. A lot more emphasis was placed on individual character arcs and circumstances, which I think was a good choice, since with so many main characters, they needed more concentrated character development in order to put them up to par with Percy and Annabeth. Plus it allowed Rick to still go into some different themes a bit, like racism with Hazel, trauma with Leo, insecurity with Frank, etc, in a way that felt natural and relevant. It helped that they were broken up into different books for their introductions, so not everything was dumped in at once.

The ending of Heroes of Olmypus... yeah the final battle with the GIants was lame as all hell, and honestly the quest ended up feeling a bit like busywork, but screw it, I did LOVE one part of the ending. The imagery of big, bad Gaia, who even Zeus is so scared of he just wants to hide away with his head in the ground, physically manifesting and being about to take everyone out, everyone losing hope... and then screaming as Festus appears and snatches her up into the sky as Leo gives a shit-eating grin and hurls fireballs at her while insulting her the whole time is just GREAT. I always giggle, and I honestly found it a lot more memorable than the Kronos fight, even if it was technically less epic. It seemed fitting for her to be taken out in such an embarrassing way, by the boy she’d personally taken the most from.

Magnus Chase... yeah that’s the only one I didn’t finish. Quick note: its been over a year since I tried it, so I’m operating off of memory here. I wanted to like it, and after reading through Heroes of Olympus (which i originally stopped reading after Mark of Athena) and Trials of Apollo, I was all hyped up for more Riordanverse... and was disappointed. The basic elements were there, and the writing itself wasn’t bad, but... well, I never really got attached to most of the characters this time, I didn’t find the quest very interesting, and... well, you see how I mentioned about the themes in the earlier reviews? I thought Rick bit off more than he could chew with Magnus Chase, at least with the first book. (I slogged through the first book, got a hundred pages into the second book to see whether Alex, who I’d heard a lot of hype about, could save it, thought Alex was only ok but not someone who saved the book, and called it quits).

So in Magnus Chase, Rick went DEEP into the social commentary on a lot of disparate subjects, trying to really tackle homelessness, child abuse (because no duh, that’s pretty much a staple, I think the only of his series that DOESN’T have major themes around that is Kane Chronicles), Islamophobia, ableism, and... I’m having trouble thinking of the exact term for it, but Blitzen was heavily looked down upon and derided for wanting to make fashionable armor and just being into fashion in general, so... I think it’s supposed to commentary on making fun of people for having interests that are generally seen as feminine? I guess? I dunno, it was definitely social commentary on SOMETHING, but I think the dwarves having their own particular culture here hurt whatever Rick was trying to say, since social commentary is very much tied to the culture it’s in, and we only have a small taste of dwarven culture, at least in the first book.

In any case, all these things are fine to do social commentary on, but when you’re trying to go in-depth and really address them, it helps if they’re more tied in with the overall conflict in the book, and if each issue has room to breathe. As it was, it kinda felt to me like the characters were being paraded from location to location to confront some different social issue. I just thought it was too much, too crammed into one book, and the overall conflict had pretty much nothing to do with that. Like, at the end of the book Rick tried to tie it together with some sort of “we’re a band of misfits” message, and... well, a message based on NOT fitting in with society, isn’t one that’s very satisfying or cohesive. And the individual issues, while there’s certainly cross-sectionality between, aren’t intrinsically linked, so... they just don’t mesh together very well. Not so many, all mashed into one book. Plus I just didn’t care for any of the gods, and the only characters I liked were Magnus and Sam. Blitz and Hearthstone... they were just sort of “there” for me.

I can see why people like Magnus Chase, and it’s not BAD by any means, but it just wasn’t for me. Maybe I’ll take another crack at it at some point, but I’m not super optimistic about it. As it was, I just ended up looking up the parts where Magnus met with Annabeth and read those.

Trials of Apollo though, I ADORE. Apollo was hilarious (along with the books in general), it had a pretty focused message about child abuse and abuse in general, along with how a privileged position can blind you from the travesties that are going on around you, or that you yourself cause, and I just thought the themes worked very well. Rick went more in-depth this time on the exact consequences of child abuse and the ways that a parent could abuse and manipulate their child, something that wasn’t covered as much in his earlier series, as those were more based around neglect. I’m a sucker for a good redemption arc, and I was really impressed with how it was kinda slipped in with Apollo. Like, he didn’t even know he NEEDED one, and the good guys weren’t especially pressing him on that point, it’s a realization he slowly came to over the course of several books. And you can clearly tell that he’s conceited and has issues, but isn’t actually malicious... and slowly the reader comes to the realization that he has hidden depths, that not even HE knew he had. It’s really interesting how he did some pretty bad things (or DIDN’T do, a lot of it has to do with inaction and just being uncaring), but he never comes off as being like, evil. He comes off as being an arrogant, narcissistic person at first, but then slowly finding out that beneath that is a lot of pain and trauma, and part of that persona he’s built up has been to deal with this. Watching him slowly change and grow and discover himself during the series, in a way he never had before... it’s just amazing to read. Also puts a nice cap on the Greco-Roman saga, in that the past two series had a heavy emphasis on how the gods didn’t care enough and had to have their hands forced a lot, and Apollo sort of acting as a stand-in for those other gods, showing that yes, they CAN change for the better - something that most of the gods, and even other immortals, didn’t think was possible, even as they did it.

Well that was super long. But yeah, I have strong feelings on the Riordanverse, and Trials of Apollo is far and away my favorite.

#ask #long post #percy jackson #heroes of olympus #kane chronicles #trials of apollo

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lloydskywalkers · 4 years

Text

So on the incredibly rare occasion that I do write romance, I have the ability to write one (1) single romance and that is all, and that’s Dumb Fools in Love. Which hopefully fits here, because it’s Glass Girl’s namesake day, so i gotta at least try for @speedythecat, it’s what she desERVES.

(happy valentines this is disgusting fluff anyways i love u speedy)

Lloyd likes the way construction paper sounds. It’s kind of therapeutic, the sound it makes as he drags the scissors through the middle. It’s even more satisfying when he uses them to start stabbing gaping holes through the paper, because he went and ruined the stupid heart shape again, and now he’s running out of pink and red construction paper that doesn’t look like he took a vicious katana to it and went crazy.

“Stupid scissors—”

He doesn’t know if Rain even likes pink or red that much, Lloyd reminds himself dismally, as he untangles his fingers from the scissors. Just that they’re thematically appropriate to the essence of the holiday, or whatever, and they apparently must’ve been the only two colors that existed when whoever came up with Valentine’s Day was around. He hasn’t even found actual purple in any of the little cards he’s seen, just some floral lavender.

Lloyd glances down to the pile of pink and red paper strewn across the table in front of him, then back to the instructions he’s printed out for himself. Then back to the paper.

Maybe he can just like, die instead.

Lloyd is about ninety percent sure that he can’t be the only person to ever look up “how to make Valentine’s Day cards” on the internet before, but it still feels like a crushing blow to his pride and an overall dumb move in general as he does.

But he’s only slightly desperate right now, and he really doesn’t want to reach fully desperate, so he’s willing to suck up his pride if it means not totally ruining his girlfriend’s hopes and dreams by giving her a sub-par and ultimately disappointing Valentine’s Day card that looks like he doesn’t even understand the holiday in the first place.

To be fair, though, he kinda doesn’t.

Like, Lloyd knows what Valentine’s Day is, obviously. He’s not an idiot. He’s just…never really participated in it…as a person. It seems like all the others have cute little stories of getting paper cut-outs and candy hearts in grade school (which he can get behind, if there’s candy), but Lloyd’s experience in grade school was general scorn toward anything love-related at all. Valentine’s Day was well out of the question. Lloyd didn’t even know it existed until he walked straight into a street stand that looked like red and pink had thrown up all over it, before being drowned in like, twenty-dozen bouquets of roses.

He’d been an awful brat of a child then, so at the time, he’d dealt with it by kicking the stand over and being totally grossed out. Now, however, he’s left wondering if those bouquets are worth the money, or if he should invest in the slightly bigger ones they sell over on the east side stands.

How the tables have turned, Lloyd sighs miserably to himself, struggling to peel another stubborn strip of glitter glue from his hand where it’s dried there, sparkling mockingly at him. Finally digging the glue free, Lloyd brushes his hands off and glances down at his paper.

Go for handmade.

Well, that one’s easy, ‘cause there’s no way Lloyd’s physically bringing himself to walk into a store and buy Rain some cheesy card with a bunch of generic hearts on it. This, of course, leaves the problem that Lloyd now has to come up with the card, and the only thing that’s coming to mind are generic, cheesy hearts.

Hmm. Lloyd taps the edge of the table, humming beneath his breath. He can draw pretty well, but he’s not like, an artist. Not like Cole is, or anything. Lloyd is a lot better at cartoon characters and funny little caricatures of the others than he is, say, detailed roses or something.

Rain likes cats, right? he muses. He could draw a cat, and then maybe have it holding a heart, or something. That’d be kinda cute, maybe. And then he’d get to make some awful pun like “you’re paw-sitively purr-fect”—

Lloyd slams his head down on the table. Nope. This is why he’s not allowed to come up with the idea himself. He’s worse than all the awful grocery store cards put together.

Something in his nose tickles, and he sneezes, sending up sparkly dust all around him. Lloyd blinks, then bites back a moan. Belatedly, he realizes he’s just dunked his head in glitter dust.

It could’ve been the glue, he tries to comfort himself.

Figuring he’s already doomed, Lloyd makes peace with the fact that he’s just going to live the rest of his day resembling a blond disco ball, and lifts his head to return to task, squinting at what’s next on the list.

Make it personal.

Again, that one should be easy too, because it’s Rain. But what’s supposed to count as personal? Is it like, I-love-you personal, or here’s-a-reference-to-inside-joke-number-fifty-eight kind of personal? Should he do both? He and Rain have too many inside jokes, though, it’ll take him half the day to pick one, and he’s already running out of time. Rain’s supposed to be back at noon, and Lloyd does not have that kind of time to kill.

He drums his fingers against the table-top, staring at the outlined drawing of Rain his fingers have absently started sketching out, right next to his doodles of little cats and a mini-Overlord raging terror on the glitter glue scattered across the paper.

Lloyd frowns at the last one. Oops. Well, he can’t give her this now.

“Is that supposed to be the Overlord? You can’t give Rain that for Valentine’s Day.”

Lloyd jumps half a foot out of his chair and slams his knee into the table just so that his entire leg goes dead, his shriek of surprise strangling off as he chokes on the erupting cloud of glitter dust.

By the time he winds down coughing, wiping the reflexive tears from his eyes and glaring, Kai is just staring at him, mildly concerned and whole lot unimpressed.

“A little warning, please.”

“I’ve been standing here for five minutes, bud, it’s not my fault you’re in dreamland.” Kai glances down at the table-top of scattered construction paper and glitter dust, and his mouth trembles, like he’s holding back laughter. “Are you…trying to make a card, or mass-murdering our construction paper supply?”

Lloyd feels his cheeks go scarlet, and he sputters. “I’m not — no, I’m just—” He waves his hands in the air, wishing he could disappear. “Valentine’s Day,” he finally says, haplessly. “Rain. Card.”

“Ah,” Kai says, nodding. He eyes the butchered pile of paper. “It’s going…good, then?”

Lloyd buries his face in his hands, groaning. “I keep ruining it. I’ve never done Valentine’s Day before, Kai, this is a disaster. Rain’s gonna hate it.”

“Aw, don’t say that,” Kai says, sliding into the chair next to him, patting him on the shoulder. “Rain’ll be fine with…whatever…you end up making. It’s not that big a deal.” He laughs, rolling his eyes. “I mean, it’s not like she’s going to get horribly upset because you butchered her favorite holiday and dump you for some chump with better taste.”

Lloyd freezes dead, his eyes widening. He has not yet considered this option. What if he does ruin Rain’s entire holiday with his awful gift? What if, by completely disrespecting her last name’s namesake — thing — she does get horribly upset and runs off with like, Ariya to the desert or something, and—

Kai blinks, then his eyes go wide. “Lloyd, wait — no, it was a joke, Lloyd, don’t get that look on your face — Nya!”

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

And that’s how Lloyd ends up cornered by his entire team at the kitchen table, covered in glitter dust and currently living out his worst life as they try to decide the best way for him not to totally sabotage his love life in one go.

“Honestly, I never really got Valentine’s Day,” Kai remarks. “I didn’t get the whole grade school experience as much, since we homeschooled for the most part. It’s just a lot of hearts and chocolate and flowers and stuff, right?”

“Um, it’s a lot more than that,” Jay rolls his eyes. “It was classroom warfare. Your like, entire life status was measured by how many Valentines you’d get. It was totally lame,” he scowls.

“I dunno, I always got a whole lot,” Cole muses. “I could never figure out why, though. I wasn’t super popular, or anything...”

They all stare at Cole for a beat, where he stands haloed beneath the kitchen lights in all his wavy-haired glory.

“Hopeless,” Jay sighs.

“This isn’t grade school, though,” Nya says. “This is Lloyd’s actual relationship, which we are helping him with, so let’s hear actual helpful stuff, please.”

“Again,” Kai shrugs. “Flowers. Chocolate. Hearts. Bam, you’re good.”

“For crying out loud,” Jay groans. “How do magazines keep labeling you the smooth one.”

“Hold on, he’s got a point with the chocolate part,” Cole points out.

“Of course, you would choose that part to focus on,” Zane sighs.

“Guys, enough,” Nya cuts over them. “I said helpful stuff, not the most generic ideas ever. I mean, chocolate’s nice, but Lloyd’ll probably eat it all before it gets to Rain anyways—”

“I would not!” Lloyd protests.

“—and the card’s gonna be the focal point, so hearts are covered.” Nya glances down the pile of butchered construction paper in front of Lloyd, and winces. “We’ll, uh, help you with that part. But first, let’s plan.” She tugs a half-torn piece of construction paper toward her, uncapping a marker. “What all does Rain like, for starters?”

“Well,” Lloyd pauses, thinking. “She does like flowers, and — no, no I am not going to ask Lief for help, no way, not a chance.”

“Just a suggestion!” Jay throws his hands up in defense. “He’s her friend, though, so he’d probably have some ideas, y’know?”

“So. Not. Worth it.”

“Okay, okay, geez.”

Nya rolls her eyes, but scribbles ‘flowers — not from Lief’ on the paper anyways. “Good, but that’s still pretty standard stuff. Anything else a little more creative? Something that really says Rain to you.”

“She likes rocks,” Lloyd nods.

The marker squeaks violently on the paper, and Nya makes a dying sound in the back of her throat. Kai breaks into snickering, and Jay whacks him on the shoulder, giggling.

“There you go, bud, perfect Valentine’s gift. Give her a rock.”

“No,” Nya says firmly, glaring at Jay. She then turns the glare on Lloyd, who immediately shrinks lower in his seat. “Rocks, Lloyd, really — okay. Okay, do you know anything else she likes? That’s not rocks?”

“Uh, she likes…glass?” Lloyd says, weakly. “And um, seashells. And tea, and — she really does like rocks, I’m serious! Like, cool ones—“

“You are not giving Rain a rock for Valentine’s Day!”

“A cool rock!”

“That doesn’t make it any more acceptable!”

“Ughhh.” Lloyd slides down in his chair with a dying moan, throwing his arms over his face. “You ruin everything. She likes those little paper cranes, I guess. And, uh…”

“You,” Zane reminds him. “She likes you. Therefore, she will most likely love anything you give her, since it’s from you.”

Normally, Lloyd would just scoff at that, but Zane’s voice is so sincere it actually helps, a little. Lloyd sits up in his seat a bit, his crossed arms loosening. “Well…”

“Yeah! So why don’t you just draw her a cat that says like, ‘you’re purr-fect’, or something?” Jay suggests. “That sounds like you.”

Lloyd slams his head against the table, once again accidentally dunking himself in glitter dust. He can’t bring himself to care this time, because the whole world apparently just knows him for terrible puns.

“Stop being so melodramatic, you’re going to remind her of her brother,” Nya clips. Lloyd chokes on his tongue, and dissolves into a fit of manic sputtering as Kai claps him on the back, encouraging him to breathe.

“—was just a joke, Lloyd, don’t take her seriously.”

“—time and place, Nya, time and place—!”

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

It takes several disastrous attempts and more than a few marker wars — Kai in particular is sporting some spectacular pink sharpie marks along the side of his face, and Lloyd’s got streaking red marks across his forearms as the price for protecting his own face — but Lloyd end up with one brightly-colored, cursive-lettered Valentine’s card for Rain.

He’s feeling pretty confident in it, actually. It says everything he wants it to say, while looking pretty but dignified, and it’s only got one cat on it, so he’s — he’s pretty sure Rain will like it. A lot more than any of his other disastrous attempts, he assures himself. Now all he’s gotta do is grab the flowers Nya made him promise to get, and according to both Wikihow and his family, he’ll have the perfect Valentine. Armed with that knowledge, Lloyd strides confidently for the kitchen table to grab an envelope.

Only to freeze dead when he comes face-to-face with Rain, who’s bent over studying said disastrous attempts from earlier, that he’s left out in full view on the kitchen table like a complete moron.

Rain’s currently got one of his first attempts in her hands, her finger tracing the little design he’d drawn. Her hair’s down right now, all silvery and smooth and falling over her face, so he can’t see her expression.

Lloyd is highly considering running for the hills by like, hurling himself out the kitchen window, when Rain turns around, the end her nose still red from the outside cold, freckles standing out more than usual on her cheeks. Lloyd freezes in place.

She holds up one of the ruined cards. “Are all these...for me?”

Lloyd’s soul makes the executively wise decision to exit his body right then.

“They’re — I — no, they’re for, uh—”

Lloyd’s mind backfires. Shoot, he can’t say they’re for someone else, they’ve got ‘I love you’ and other sappy stuff all over them, what’s he supposed to do—

“They’re, uh, for my grandmother.”

Rain raises an eyebrow. “Your grandmother…named Rain,” she says slowly, reading the name that’s brightly plastered everywhere.

“Her name’s Rain too,” Lloyd tries, weakly.

Rain raises her other eyebrow. She wordlessly holds up one of the cards, pointing to where “Rain Allira Valentine” is highlighted. Lloyd mentally makes a note to murder Kai later as her finger slides down to the “Mr. Rain Valentine” right below, her lips trembling as she tries to hold back a snicker.

“Um.” At least she’s laughing, Lloyd tells himself. She hasn't run off to the desert yet. “I have a better one for you, I swear. Those are just — really, really bad first attempts, which you were never supposed to see, ever.”

Please forget they ever existed, is on the tip of his tongue, but Rain’s expressions softens, her eyes fond as she looks from the cards to him.

“I don’t know, these are…kinda sweet,” she admits, her cheeks going a bit pink.

“Oh,” Lloyd says, his own face heating. “That’s! That’s good, I guess. I mean, this new one’s — it’s a whole lot better, though, and uh…” He frantically rubs the back of his head, trying to get his brain back online and working properly again. Unfortunately, the action sends a tiny shower of sparkles raining from his hand, and Lloyd remembers in horror that he never got that glitter dust out.

Rain smirks, biting back a laugh. “Hold on,” she says, stepping in close. “You’ve got some — here.”

She pushes a hand through his hair, her fingers gently tangling through the thick blond strands before pulling away, leaving her fingers stained in glitter dust. She gives a tiny snicker, then brushes at his hair with her other hand, neatly sweeping a shower of glitter dust from it before carefully tousling his hair back in place.

“There,” she says. “Now you don’t look as much like a disco ball.”

“Maybe I wanted to look like a disco ball,” Lloyd says, petulantly. “Lloyd Disco Ball Garmadon, that’s me.”

“Then I’d have to make you another Valentine’s card,” Rain says, and Lloyd finally spots the envelope she’s been keeping behind her back. “Because I definitely messed up your middle name, if that’s the case.”

Lloyd blinks rapidly. “Wait, you got me one?”

Rain freezes, looking unsure. “Um…yes? That’s kind of…the point, right? You give Valentine’s to people you lo—like—um, love.”

Lloyd’s definitely red now. “I-I probably wouldn’t know,” he finally stammers. “Darkley’s wasn’t too big on Valentine’s.”

Lloyd immediately wants to hit himself, because Rain’s here being sweet and talking about love, and he’s bringing up Darkley’s like a motor-mouthed moron. And now Rain looks sad, and is it too late for Lloyd to pitch himself out the window—?

“Well, lucky for you, I know all about it,” Rain suddenly says, firmly. “You’ll just have to spend the day with me, so I can give you the run-down.”

“That I can do,” Lloyd grins brightly in relief.

“It’s a date, then,” Rain beams, before her smile hitches in laughter. “And you, um, you have more glitter. On your cheek.”

Lloyd wipes quickly at his face. “Oh, come on — did I get it?”

“No, now you’re just — okay, stop, I’ll get it, hold on.”

Rain steps nearer again, brushing her thumb across his cheek once, then again. “There,” she nods satisfied. She doesn’t move back, though, standing close enough that Lloyd can count her freckles, and see every shade of teal in her eyes. There’s a hint of a smile left on her face, and Lloyd swallows. This would probably be like, the perfect time to—

“For FSM’s sake, kiss her, you moron, she’s totally set you up for it—”

Kai’s voice cuts off in a strangled choking sound as Nya throttles him while both Rain and Lloyd go scarlet, and Lloyd makes another mental note to murder Kai a second time later.

“Wanna go out?” Lloyd suggests hastily, his face flaming. “The candy’s probably not gonna be on sale yet, but I bet we can get someone to cut us a deal.”

“Yes,” Rain nods fervently. “Let’s — out. Go out. Of here, sounds good.”

“Great,” Lloyd says, then snatches both their jackets from the hook before fleeing, Rain trailing behind him as they sprint past the others, stifling laughter as Lloyd desperately avoids making eye contact with anyone. Rain’s muffling giggles too, though, and Lloyd can’t help breathing out a laugh as he flings open the doors tumbling out into the chilly February weather.

“So, I have a question,” he says, as their footsteps fall into pace down the street. “What do you think of like, rocks as a present?”

“Hm, I don’t know. Is it like, a cool rock?”

“I mean, hypothetically? Yeah, a super cool rock.”

“Well, if it’s super cool. Then that’d be a good one, I guess.”

“I knew it—!”

#ninjago #lloyd garmadon #rain #oc #this is the Worst of Sap #the rest of the team is here being...sort of...helpful too #anyways stan rain

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